Flare
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, creaturefic. Given phoenix wings by a misfired curse, Harry wants to get rid of them as soon as possible. But Draco Malfoy has a strange investment in his keeping them. COMPLETE.
1. Adoleo Phoenici

**Title: **Flare

**Disclaimer: **These characters belong to J. K. Rowling and associates. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, mentions of Ron/Hermione

**Warnings: **Creature!fic, angst, sex, some violence, OC character death.

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **Caught in the middle of a misfired curse, Harry is half-transformed into a phoenix, to the point of carrying wings on his back. He arranges with the Healers for research that will hopefully cure him-only to find that Draco Malfoy has a strange vested interest in him keeping the bloody things.

**Author's Notes: **This is a story that I've had in mind for a long time, though not always in its present form. The creature aspect is an important part of the fic, so don't read it if that's not your thing. I'm anticipating a story of about 15 parts, with fairly short chapters.

**Flare**

_Chapter One-Adoleo Phoenici_

There was only the former Death Eater in front of him, Hyperion Rosier, one of the minor ones while Voldemort was alive but one of the worst troublemakers since, a murderer, a rapist, a torturer. There was only Rosier and the need to capture him.

Later, Harry would wish there had been other things in his mind.

Rosier was dodging through the Forbidden Forest, where Harry, Ron, and a hastily-gathered Auror strike force had tracked him after months of hard work. He kept firing curses over his shoulder, but his breath was coming short, his feet were stumbling, and Harry knew that he couldn't last much longer or have that much more power for magic. The others had long since fallen behind. He didn't know exactly what part of the Forest they were in; it was dark and the trees that flashed past him all looked the same.

It didn't matter. What mattered was that Rosier couldn't possibly run much further, and there seemed to be a charm he hadn't cast on Harry's feet that night, sparing him all the roots and holes that could have broken his ankle, all the times he could have stumbled and been left behind, all the little creeks that he could have splashed through that would slow him down.

What mattered was Rosier, and the chance to put the last free Death Eater behind bars and finally, finally, call the war done.

The moonlight went out as Harry plunged beneath a cover of thick, tightly-entwined branches, following Rosier. He was tracking more with his ears than his eyes by then, listening to the harsh and hurried pants from ahead, the swish of Rosier's robes, the leaves he shuffled through. He was five meters away.

Three.

One.

Harry sprang.

There was a moment when Rosier writhed beneath him like the enchanted wish-giving fish in Rose's favorite story, and Harry thought he might get away. Harry tightened his grip and cast a spell that would stick his hands to Rosier's skin, come what may. This was the end. This was the end of all the nightmares that everyone had faced since the last few Death Eaters gathered together and tried to "revive the Dark Lord's ideals." For the children murdered in their beds, for the acquitted wizards who were just trying to forget the Dark Marks on their arms, for Harry's own dark dreams. The end.

Rosier screamed once as he tried to fight free and only found himself dragged back down. It was the scream of a trapped, maddened animal. Harry chuckled deep in his throat. He could do the same thing, if he wanted. He had been tempted to make the same sounds during the long years of hunting and hoping and never finding. Or dragging in Death Eaters and watching them walk away because there was conveniently "lost" evidence that would have implicated them. The day they finally dug out the Death Eater sympathizer in the Auror Department was one that Harry would remember with satisfaction for a long time.

Perhaps Rosier sensed the darkness in Harry, his willingness to answer violence with violence. He went limp suddenly. Harry lay on top of him, too wise in the ways of Dark wizards by now to let him go, and sent up a spray of green sparks with little more than a thought. The spells Hagrid had taught them to use all those years ago were still some good now.

Rosier shifted around slightly. Harry tightened his hold and whispered, "Don't move. I _will _kill you before I let you go."

Rosier said nothing, but his arms went tense. Harry suspected he was digging his fists into the earth, getting ready to stand. Well, Harry could counter that, too. He shifted his weight to the side and waited.

"_Adoleo phoenici!_"

Rosier hadn't been trying to stand. He had been casting a spell. Harry ducked his head and cast a Shield Charm around himself, moving so fast that for a moment, he believed it had got there before the spell struck him.

As it turned out, it hadn't. He really had been paying too much attention to Rosier and not enough attention to possible defeat.

The fire that consumed him was brilliant, eye-searing, red and gold. Harry had seen those flames before, when Fawkes was reborn, but this was worse, bigger, painful, stinging along his nerves, melting and reshaping his bones as if they were glass. Harry's only satisfaction as the fire leaped through him, golden and swallowing, was that he had heard Rosier also shriek in pain. If he went to his death, it wouldn't be alone.

* * *

"I can't believe he would survive that..." A hushed, wondering voice.

"I can. He's Harry Potter." Ron's voice, familiar and oh so welcome right now. Then Ron was on his knees beside Harry, shaking him insistently. "Harry. _Harry_. I know you're awake now."

Harry blinked and opened his eyes. He was staring at green leaves that shimmered faintly against the rising sun. The Forbidden Forest, he remembered with a start. _Rosier. _

He tried to roll to his feet, but four things happened simultaneously to prevent that. He realized he was naked under a blanket and a set of spare robes. Tingling pain shot through him, burning pain that lit up his nerves. Ron reached out and held his shoulders down.

And something else moved with him, enormous billows of red and gold like sails, snapping against his arms and shoulders the way that Harry imagined one of Dudley's robes would, if he had ever worn robes.

"Easy, mate," Ron said. His voice was soft and soothing, but it faded into insignificance as Harry stared at the folds that were draped over his arms, sprawling and rolling and falling as though they were made of water. It was really more like cloth than anything else, he thought half-mindlessly, the part of his mind that had been trained to observe criminals working erratically, filling his thoughts with snow.

Wings. He had fucking _wings._

They were huge, rising above his head in elongated arches, reaching beneath his ankles. Harry didn't know why they hadn't hurt when he was lying on them, but suspected that being unconscious might have had something to do with that. The pain along his nerves was fading as the wings seemed to settle into his back and shoulders, becoming more and more a part of him. Harry reached back and groped for where they began, and after a single, flinching movement, Ron let him.

They sprang from just beside each shoulder blade, he found, in the middle of his back between them. From what he could feel by exploring with his fingers, each wing connected in a-a sheath of some kind, a pouch of skin that was fastened to his back and seemed to extend over to the spine. He shifted again, and the wings trembled in the corner of his vision, leaning over his head, trailing behind him. Now that Harry could see them more clearly, the sense of them as just huge tapestries of cloth was departing. They had looked like that because the fire-colors had overlapped so smoothly. He could see the individual feathers now, the red and gold splatters like coats of paint crossed over each other, the occasional spark of blue and white and orange. God, they _shone. _And he could feel the faint heat from the feathers against his back.

"Rosier?" he asked, licking his lips and wondering why he hadn't thought to ask that question right away. Perhaps his mind was trying to compensate for an exclusive focus on Rosier by overfocus on his wings right now.

Merlin, he had _wings_.

"Burned to death," Ron said quietly. "Near as we can tell. He used a spell that-I've heard about it in legends, Harry, I've never _seen _it." Harry reached out and held on hard to Ron's hand. At least someone was feeling the same mixture of fear and helpless wonder that he did. "But from what I remember, it's supposed to immolate someone it's cast on, burning them up completely, the way a phoenix's flame does."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "I managed to get a Shield Charm up before he could launch the spell at me."

Ron nodded. "Then maybe that has something to do with it. The charm rebounded the spell on him, and he burned, but you-some of it got through to you. Or maybe it was your scar, or something to do with the way you saved the world. Who knows." Ron's voice had stopped shaking. "But we need to get you back to the Ministry, mate. We didn't want to wake you up or move you until you woke up on your own. But we'll have to figure out who to tell about this-"

"No."

Ron fell silent at the sound of his voice. The other Aurors with them had retreated to what Harry assumed had to be non-hearing distance, or he would have someone protesting already.

Harry stared at Ron, trying to make him understand the importance of this. Ron stared back, then frowned. "I'll support you whatever you choose, mate. But why _not _the Ministry?"

"They would try to keep it secret," Harry said. "Decide who needs to know. Make it some new means of isolating me, or trying to keep me out of danger, or figuring out how to use me." Someone had tried all those things with him in the last few years, including telling him that he shouldn't be involved in the hunt for the Death Eaters because it was "too dangerous" and Britain might lose a "national treasure." "I'm going to St Mungo's instead. If anyone can find a way to help me reverse this, they can." He leaned on Ron and began to stagger to his feet, trying not to step on his wings this time.

"Uh," Ron said, standing up with him. He looked as if he was having trouble keeping his eyes on Harry's face, instead of his wings. Harry knew the feeling, although it made him furious to think about it. "I've never heard of someone becoming part-phoenix. And managing to recover from it, to boot."

"I know," Harry said. "No one ever survived the Killing Curse, either. Someone's got to be the first, Ron." He smiled at him, and Ron smiled back, cautiously, as if he wanted to know whether Harry would take off flying in a random direction. "In this, too."

"And you don't want to keep them?" Ron eyed the wings again. He reached out, hesitated, then continued at Harry's nod. Harry had been afraid the wings would be sensitive, but at least the part that Ron touched wasn't. It just felt like someone smoothing a finger over his hair.

"Blimey," Ron said.

Harry shook his head. "Maybe if so much other shit hadn't happened to me, I might want to. But this is just the last straw. I want to be as normal as I can, now, while still leading my life. And phoenix wings don't fit into that." _If they're even phoenix wings, _he had to add in his head. They didn't look like anything he'd ever seen on Fawkes, or the phoenix feathers he sometimes came across in Auror work. Too many colors, too oddly-shaped, too _big. _

"Yeah, I see." Ron reached out and picked up a set of robes and trousers that he had lying off to the side. "We think your old clothes burned up with Rosier. But I don't know what to do about a shirt."

Harry made a disgusted noise. Neither did he. The swellings that produced the wings could extend through slits in the back of the shirt, maybe, but they would still bulge oddly beneath the cloth. He pulled the trousers on, half-tripping on the feathers, and reached out. "Give the robes here, and I'll try to fold the wings under them. I might look like I have a hunchback, but there are worse fates."

For the first time, he concentrated on his wings, trying to order them to obey, to fold. They shook around him, and Harry had an odd, uncomfortable sensation that he'd grown another set of arms-

Then they collapsed in on themselves, laid along his shoulders, still as long as they had been and as tall, projecting them above his shoulders, but far narrower. Harry sighed and draped the robes over them, then glanced at the snickering Ron and shook his head. He'd need a cloak, too, so that he could try and cram it over the curves of the wings that nodded next to his cheeks.

"At least we can laugh about it," he muttered, cracking a smile of his own.

Yes, this was bloody inconvenient, but a temporary setback. By a few months from now, at the most, Harry was confident he would have his life back again.


	2. Stranger Things

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two-Stranger Things_

The visit to St. Mungo's wasn't immediately productive, but then, Harry hadn't really expected it to be.

The Healers stared at him first, then shook their heads and got down to work. Harry sat on the table they'd assigned him-seriously, it was a tradition that there were no comfortable beds in hospital, ever-and tried to keep the wings from unfolding and poking the longer feathers on them into the eyes of people who wanted to investigate them. He was a bit comforted that, while they didn't appear to have seen _this _particular phenomenon before, they would have seen much worse in their daily rounds.

The first Healer who spoke to him extensively, as opposed to asking what had happened with the spell and listening to his story, was a tall woman with blonde hair bound so tight around her head in a series of corkscrew braids that Harry winced. "Do you feel an increase in your magic?" she asked him, jotting down rapid notes on a bound sheaf of parchment as she examined the wings. "An increase in body temperature?"

Harry shook his head. "Should I?" he added, when he saw her frown.

She shrugged. "It means that one of my first hypotheses for why this had happened is moot. I thought that perhaps the spell had injected some phoenix magic directly into your core, and that would mean the ability to call fire as well as feel warmer-have you ever touched a phoenix? You noticed the way they always burn?"

Harry nodded. "Is there any record of a person surviving this spell before?"

She shook her head. "Either they survive unchanged, or they die. Not in this half-state." She squinted at the wings, then waved her wand. Whatever spell she had done, Harry felt no difference, but a minute later a long string of blue numbers began to unfold in the air next to the curve of the right wing that projected over his shoulder. "Hmm," the Healer said in an abstracted voice. "These are much bigger than the wings of a typical phoenix would be in relation to body size."

"I noticed that. I thought someone had covered me with curtains at first."

The Healer smiled at him and clapped him on the shoulder, above the pouches of skin that seemed to be where his hindrances began. "Anything unusual could be a clue. We'll definitely look into it and see whether their unusual size and strength has something to do with the spell."

_Their bloody _existence _has something to do with the spell, _Harry thought grumpily, but they were trying to be nice and he kept quiet.

"My name is Elena Redusson, by the way," said the Healer, scribbling one more note and then flicking her wand down sharply so the numbers vanished. "I'll be the primary theorist assigned to your case."

"Can I leave hospital and go home?" Harry craned his neck back and got a face full of feathers. He rolled his eyes, spat them out, and added, "Or did you want to keep me overnight?"

Redusson laughed. "You were already in the Forest overnight, surrounded by the ashes of your dead enemy, and nothing happened except the wings' initial growth, although you had two concerned witnesses watching you. I think that you're free to go for now, but we'll call you back in for tests on a regular basis."

Harry nodded, relieved that he had someone who agreed with him about the way that things should be done. He stood up, and then winced as his wings swept forwards and nearly knocked down both Redusson and the two apprentice Healers who'd been watching her work. "Sorry. I don't know how to control them yet."

"That might be the best thing you could do." Redusson looked at him for permission, then reached out and touched the edge of the wing. Harry shivered. It felt a tad more sensitive than the part Ron had touched back in the Forest. Redusson nodded and wrote some more. "If they won't obey you, then it means something different than if they're attached to you and are-alternate limbs, in a sense."

Harry really didn't _want _extra limbs, alternate or otherwise, but Redusson wasn't the one who had cast the spell and it would have been stupid to make a point of it. "I can make them fold," he said, and then ducked as another wing swished past his head. He didn't even know which one it was. He sighed. "And not even that, sometimes."

"Fold the wings on a count of three, if you can," Redusson said, watching with alert, interested eyes, and Harry nodded when he thought he had disentangled them. "One, two..."

Harry hurried them down before she reached three. They felt like collapsible tents this time, and not much more comfortable to carry on his back, though lighter. Redusson nodded again. "Then I think they're under your control."

"They won't be so good as to fall off when I tell them to, I suspect," Harry muttered, and shook her hand before he left. When he stepped out into the corridor, things looked quiet. He relaxed. Of course there was no way to prevent people from finding out about this, when he'd deliberately taken steps not to hide, but he wanted a little time to go back to the Ministry, report, and then go home and think before the rush of the press descended.

Ron appeared at the end of the corridor nearest the stairs. Harry waved to him and started forwards.

"What have you done to yourself now, Potter?"

Harry turned around with a sigh. Of course one of the first few people to see him after the bloody transformation would be Draco Malfoy, who worked as a brewer supplying Potions to St. Mungo's. Harry didn't even care at the moment that this was one of the few jobs Malfoy could find where people would react to _him_ instead of his name. It was a damn inconvenience.

But all things considered, Malfoy was better than a reporter.

"Spell gone wrong," Harry said. "Healer Redusson is looking to help me find some way to cut them off." There. Now Malfoy would have bare facts, unadorned, the same story Harry intended to tell the papers, and nothing he could twist around.

Of course, his wings chose that moment to bulge out again. Harry calmed them by twisting the edge of one until pain shot through him for the first time since that morning, and finally managed to get them settled on his back once more.

Malfoy was still standing in front of him when Harry looked up again. But the expression on his face was so odd Harry raised his eyebrows, wondering if he was about to faint.

"Only you, Potter," Malfoy said, but his tone of voice didn't match the way he stared at Harry. "Only you would do something so..." He gestured, seeming unable to find the right adjective. "To yourself."

"And survive it," Harry had to add. Maybe if he gave Malfoy this extra juicy little detail, he would remember who he was and what their respective roles to each other were, and leave Harry alone. "The man who used the spell on me burned to death around me. I lay in his ashes until morning."

Malfoy shuddered. "A Death Eater?" he asked.

Harry nodded. "Hyperion Rosier." _Good. Now he'll remember that _he _was one, too, and clear out of here because he thinks I'll do the same to him._

"Good," Malfoy said, making Harry blink at the echo to his thoughts. He blinked again as Malfoy moved closer to him, instead of away. "He's gone? You're sure?" Malfoy's eyes were roaming all over the wings. Harry rolled his eyes. Probably figuring out some way to make a potion that mimicked the colors.

"Yes," Harry said. "When I slept in his ashes, it's kind of hard not to be sure." He pointedly turned away from Malfoy to greet Ron, who had stepped up beside him and was giving Malfoy a sharp look. "The Healer said that she'll have to have me come back for tests, but the wings don't seem to be a danger to me right now. We should go to the Ministry."

Ron nodded, sneered at Malfoy, and turned away. Harry followed him with a little smile. Ron had discovered the value of a sneer like that at anyone he wanted to put down. They didn't expect such a cool and sharp expression from a man they automatically dismissed as a big, violent lug, and they were left wrongfooted.

"Potter! Wait."

"No," Harry said, without looking back or stopping. "I'm not going to work with you on an experimental potion unless you pay me _extremely _well, I'm not going to burn down the building, and I'm not going to listen to anything about how the wings make me look like an enormous chicken. Maybe the Healers will give you a chance at the wings when they cut them off. I plan to donate them."

"Potter, _wait_," Malfoy insisted, and Harry heard the quick click of his boots as he moved after them. Harry exchanged a glance with Ron and they both sped up without talking about it.

Except that Harry still hadn't managed to wrestle the bloody wings under control, and that meant they bulged out around Harry's head again and the trailing edges got under his feet. Swearing, he stopped and reached out so that he could disentangle the damn things. He didn't particularly care about the wings, but showing up with the edges bedraggled and dirty wouldn't make a good impression on his superiors, who would already be annoyed about his decision to go to the Healers first.

"You're going to fall," Malfoy snapped, sounding annoyed, probably because he imagined that Harry would crack his head and he would be the one who had to clean up the mess of blood and brains, and reached out so he could catch the edge that Harry was trying to wrestle into position.

His hand must have landed in a different place than the ones either Ron or Redusson had touched, because the firm grip of his fingers on the feathers, to the point that he crumpled them, made Harry hard in seconds.

Harry bent at the waist, gritting his teeth, and hoped both Malfoy and Ron would think the redness of his face came from anger and nothing else. "Get _off_," he snapped, and tried to rip his wing free.

"You're going to hurt yourself." Malfoy was in his face, lifting the wing up and spreading it. His fingers felt good everywhere as they spread across the center of the wing, and Harry shuddered. No one so far had touched that part, he was convinced. They had only gripped the edge to help extend it. "There," Malfoy said softly, his voice gone into the kind of lulling voice that Harry assumed he used with patients who had allergic reactions to his potions. "Isn't that better? Look how beautiful it is when it's spread out like that."

Harry turned towards him, hissing curses in Parseltongue. Bloody bastard just was _convinced _that he was welcome everywhere, including the places he'd been told not to enter, not to touch-

Malfoy's eyes were wide and glassy and locked on the wing, the part where the fine colors sheered into one another and overlapped like spreading pond ripples. His hand stroked over it again and again, delicate touches that barely brought his fingertips into contact with red, yellow, orange, blue, white, amber. Harry had to lock his tongue into place when he started imagining what a firmer touch could do to him if a bare brush could make him feel so _good_.

This was weird, though, and so not the way he'd wanted to find out the wings were sensitive. Harry tried to rip his new limb free of Malfoy's grip, and Malfoy's eyes locked on his face this time.

Harry didn't like what he saw in those eyes. At all. If Malfoy had some kind of wing fetish, then he would just have to indulge it far away from Harry. Harry ripped frantically, and Malfoy let him go at last and stepped back. The wings went up and curved towards him, and Harry thought it was probably a defensive reaction.

He concentrated, hard, on the way the wings had felt against his back when they folded, and finally they did. _Stupid bloody things. _It didn't help that he was weirdly cold and hot at the same time; the Healers had created a kind of panel of cloth that could be attached to his chest to cover it in place of a shirt-front, but the wings radiated shimmering heat against his back.

"You're," Malfoy said. Just that. He didn't have to say anymore, not with his eyes conveying it.

"Desperately unlucky, sick of you, and going away now," Harry said, and marched off. Ron scuttled beside him, looking at his face occasionally but having the good sense not to say anything. Harry cast a subtle spell, and finally his erection went down.

This was stupid. This was weird. Harry wanted the stupid and weird wings gone as soon as possible.

And he'd been wrong about Malfoy not being worse than a reporter. At least a reporter would only look at him that eagerly because he was fodder for a story, not as if he was a...

_Something beautiful. _


	3. Exigencies of Living

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three-Exigencies of Living_

"I want to know why you didn't come straight back to the Ministry."

Head Auror Mercy Fletcher spoke the words gently, but Harry shuddered. Ron looked as though he'd rather be out of the room.

Harry gestured to his wings. He hadn't been able to sit in an ordinary chair with a wooden back like the ones that Fletcher normally kept for all her guests. The wings had tangled around it, hung uncomfortably off the sides, and left him unable to lean back because of the bulges they made between his shoulder blades. Ron had gone and found him a stool instead, and Harry had enlarged it so that he was at Fletcher's eye level. He had the gloomy feeling that there would be many, many more things that the wings would make harder than usual for him in the near future. "The wings, madam. I thought it best to have St. Mungo's check them out first."

Fletcher nodded meditatively. She was a tall woman with dark hair, dark eyes, and a personality that resembled nails rolled in tar. "And it never occurred to you that you were giving everyone a chance to figure out that our best Auror had become a freak?"

Harry didn't flinch. Fletcher had found out his reaction to that word early on, when she'd accidentally used it around him, and used it again and again until Harry stopped wincing. Her philosophy was that she wanted her Aurors to be proof against any emotional or psychological distress their enemies might try to inflict on them with mere words.

Harry was of the opinion that that was all so much bollocks and she simply liked torturing people, but it had worked the way she said it would. "If I hid and didn't show them off," he said simply, meeting her eyes, "then it would drive the reporters mad with curiosity, and they wouldn't stop investigating until they learned the truth. Then it would become the story of why the Ministry is persecuting poor innocent Harry Potter and why they'd want to hide the story of one of their best Aurors acquiring immortality. Or else that I was playing around with illegal potions and the Ministry was covering it up."

Fletcher nodded. "You are immortal now?"

"I don't think so, no," Harry said fervently. _God, I hope not. That's all I'd need. _"But the wings are here, and they aren't the sort of thing I can hide, either."

Fletcher nodded a third time. He thought he had convinced her with the tales of conspiracy stories about the Ministry. She cared greatly for the Ministry if not as much for individual Aurors. "Very well. Then you are relieved from duty until such time as the Aurors with you make their reports on the death of Hyperion Rosier and until you find a way to wear a shirt that doesn't look like paint." She didn't look at Ron, but Harry saw his ears turn red anyway.

Harry nodded back to her-he knew from past questions that he would be paid during this unofficial holiday-and rose carefully to his feet. The wings twitched and shifted on his shoulders, the feathers stretching in random directions. Harry cursed under his breath. He'd worked hard since he got into Auror training, learning to control himself: his temper, his tendency to assume things, his bad eyesight, his muscles. It was infuriating to feel like a teenager again, reduced to clumsy stumbling at a time in his life when he should be past that.

"The wings are no practical use, then, I take it?"

Fletch had been watching him handle them, no surprise. Harry shook his head. "As a source of donated phoenix feathers for the Ministry Potions makers or St. Mungo's, madam. Nothing else."

"Best that you get rid of them as soon as possible, then," Fletcher said, and reached up to snatch a floating memo, motioning to them to get out. Ron led the way, while Harry followed cautiously in his wake. The wings still trailed on the floor, although he had found a fairly simple upwards lift that would make them rise a few inches. He reckoned it was useful.

On the other hand, he didn't want to learn how to use them. The more he knew about them, the sooner he could get rid of them, as Redusson had explained to him, but the longer he worked on them-and he could only study them by spending time with them-the more used his body would become to them, as well. And soon there might be an unbreakable bond between his body and the wings, to the point that he would grow them back if he cut them off.

Harry would have been close enough to it anyway, if he had a sufficiently sharp knife. _That _was enough to make him think about reading up on cutting spells instead of phoenixes.

"Potter."

The wings crossed in front of Harry's body without him thinking about it, which was the _problem. _He didn't want phoenix instincts on top of everything else. He folded them back again with an effort, and shook his head when the source of the voice stood revealed. "Malfoy. What do _you_ want?"

Malfoy moved a step closer. "Really," he murmured. One of the most offensive things he did, Harry thought, was just ignore Ron, without effort, as if Ron wasn't worth acknowledging. "I had thought I would receive a more generous reception." His eyes caressed the feathers.

"Why?" Harry asked. "Have you come up with a potion that can remove this? That would get you a hug, and the wings, if you want them."

"I could use some feathers, yes," Malfoy said crisply. "And if I had an extra one, then I might be persuaded to begin studying it in such a way as to permit you to remove them earlier. If you're sure that you want to." His gaze returned to Harry's face, and it _burned _in a way that made Harry's blood buzz.

"Huh," said Harry, not that persuaded, but willing to listen. Malfoy was a genius Potions maker, that much was true, and if Harry gave him some feathers, then maybe he would go away and wank with them and leave Harry alone. "Fine." He reached up, plunged his hand into the feathers on the edge of one wing, and yanked.

It _hurt. _Harry went to his knees, screaming once before he managed to choke it off in mid-cry. He was aware of furious heat on his hand, as though his blood was part fire, and the feathers were damp against his fingers. He flung them at Malfoy, hoping they landed, and kept his eyes closed. He didn't want Malfoy or Ron to see his fucking tears of fucking pain.

"Potter, you _idiot._"

Someone was kneeling beside him and trying to help him to his feet. Harry was afraid that it was Malfoy, so he kept his eyes closed so he wouldn't have to see and braced his hand on the offered arm. He could pretend that it was Ron if he really tried, he thought as he scrambled to his feet.

Granted, that was a little harder when the person helping him leaned closer and tried to fit in the circle of Harry's unwounded wing. Ron would have had better sense. But Harry just turned his head to the side and made sure that his eyes would focus on Ron over the wound.

"How bad is it?" he asked.

Ron grimaced and nodded at the hole among the feathers. Harry looked. It ought to have hurt no more than tearing out a clump of hair, he thought-painful, but not worth falling to his knees and howling about it.

It _looked _considerably worse, though. The edges of the hole were jagged, and still leaking blood and fire. Harry reached out and touched them, and his whole body, along with the stupid wing, flinched backwards before he could stop it.

"Hold still."

Malfoy was indeed on Harry's other side, standing closer to him than Harry liked or thought was legal. He reached out with one hand and tapped his wand against the hole, muttering what sounded like a simple Healing charm. Well, Harry reckoned that he would pick those up, working in St. Mungo's the way he did.

The hole hissed and spluttered like a fire that someone had dumped water on, but didn't close or stop bleeding the way Harry knew the charm should have made it do. It just kept leaking.

"Fuck-" Harry dashed a hand across his eyes, furious that he was still weeping, and reached out again.

The moment his wet hand touched the hole, it seemed to bend inwards and melt and soften, as if it had been heated. The blood sighed and stopped falling. Then a few new, ragged feathers, softly fuzzy like the down Harry had seen on baby chickens, sprouted and rose up to close the hole. Harry stared at it, then at his hand, wondering what the hell had just happened.

"Well." Malfoy's voice was cool again, but he stepped in closer, his arm curving around Harry's waist as if he had the right to be there. "Congratulations. It seems that you've inherited the healing properties of phoenix tears."

"Inherited is the wrong word, you stupid sod," Harry muttered, but it did look like Malfoy was right. At least, he couldn't think of anything else that he would have done to make the hole heal itself. He shook his hand to get the last remnants of tears and blood off it, and then started to pull away from Malfoy.

Malfoy maintained his hold. "You need to be seen," he said, in the same tone that Harry thought he would have used to instruct an erring apprentice to add more dragonsbane to a potion. "The wound may be healed now, but we don't know what other damage you've done to yourself. And an experienced Healer could give you some tips on how to live with these wings, as well as easing the-" his eyes came back to Harry's face, and Harry swallowed a gasp at the hunger in them "-obvious mental distress that you're experiencing."

Harry stared at the floor. Yes, there was a clump of phoenix feathers lying there, matted with blood. _His _feathers.

No. Thinking like that would probably hasten the process of his body acclimating to the wings, and Harry had no intention of keeping these things longer than the day someone found a cure. He stooped down and gathered up the feathers-a process made much harder by the way that Malfoy hung onto him as if Harry was his own personal teddy bear-and pressed the soaked things into Malfoy's wand hand. "Here. You have what you wanted. Now, let me _go_." He pulled, hard, and managed to break free of Malfoy's grasp.

For about one second, since Ron caught him from the other side.

"Mate, I think he's right."

Harry turned around, mouth opening as he stared incredulously at Ron. Ron met his eyes and held them, and didn't laugh in the next moment at the incredible joke he was playing, the way Harry had assumed he would. "Come _on_," Harry said. "Did you _see _the way that he-"

"Tried to help you? Yes." Either Ron thought Malfoy's weird wing fetishism was healthy for some reason, or he hadn't noticed the wing fetishism at all. He shook his head instead, frowning. "Mate, you had a hell of a night, and you haven't allowed yourself time to recover at all."

"I already went to the Healers. I _was _heading home," Harry said icily. "Where I was going to rest. Without Potions brewers who ask for feathers and then don't want to take them when I offer them."

"Why, yes, Potter, you're very welcome," Malfoy murmured.

Harry flushed and glared at him. Malfoy looked back with a raised eyebrow, and Harry could have pretended that everything was normal, given his smirk, if not for those stupid burning eyes.

_Maybe he just looks like that because he's jealous. Maybe he wants phoenix wings for himself. _But no matter how much he told himself that, Harry would meet his gaze and know that he was wrong.

"Thank you," he said grudgingly. "But Ron, I am going home to rest. Alone."

Ron still blocked his attempt to escape, and he looked so serious that Harry paused unwillingly to listen. "Harry, the way you _tore _those feathers off..." He glared until Harry nodded. "You're under a lot of stress, and I would feel better if I knew that you weren't alone. I'd go with you, but you know Fletcher. She didn't give _me _a holiday. Take Malfoy. Please."

Harry nodded unwillingly. He didn't want to get his best friend in trouble, which he would if Ron left with him now.

"Thanks," Ron said, with an exhale that seemed to use up most of the air in his body. He nodded in a friendly way to Malfoy. "Hurt him and I'll cast a spell that splinters your bones and sends all the splinters directly to your brain. Have a nice day."

He turned and strode down the corridor. Harry stared after him, then sighed and began the weary process of folding up the wings again.

Malfoy's hands fell on the edges of the wings, stroking and molding, and Harry shivered at the jolts that traveled through him in response. "Why are you doing this?" he whispered, refusing to look at Malfoy. "There are simpler ways to get Potions ingredients."

"I intend to do an intensive study of you," Malfoy whispered in his ear, and his hand caressed Harry's right wing in a way that made Harry have to close his eyes.

_This is so bloody weird._


	4. Walk the Path

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four-Walk the Path_

By the time they got to his house-small, in the middle of nowhere behind heavy wards that stayed concealed until they were needed, just the way Harry liked it-Harry was feeling a little ashamed of himself. He still didn't like Malfoy coming with him, but he reckoned the bloke was trying to help.

But it was hard to remember that when he was already struggling with the damn wings that spread wide just before he tried to enter the house. He grabbed them and folded them down, but they escaped around the sides of his arms and flapped in random directions, resisting. Harry cursed and cast a spell that contained them with an invisible barrier of hard air around his back and shoulders, ensuring they _couldn't _extend out further than the width of the doorway before he got inside.

When he let the spell go, in the middle of his large drawing room where he thought they couldn't cause much trouble, they spread with enough speed and power to knock over a clock Hermione had given him. Harry rescued it on the way down and stuffed it back on his shelf, cursing.

"You seem utterly opposed to letting them have the space and time that you know they need."

Harry glared back at Malfoy. "I don't plan to keep them," he said shortly. "They are not dogs who followed me home." He supposed dogs who had followed him home _might _be a little more trouble-at least the wings wouldn't chew on the furniture-but he didn't believe it.

Malfoy raised an eyebrow and leaned against the far wall, looking perfectly comfortable. How did he _do _that? Harry thought. He seemed to convert any place he was into the perfect habitat for himself. Harry knew that he didn't have that trick, even before the wings came along and screwed up any attempt to be casual. He would look like he was holding up the wall, or lurking in a corner, or waiting to interrogate a suspect-anything but that he belonged there. There was a reason the Ministry had given up using him in any work that involved secrecy and subtlety.

"I can see what Weasley meant about you being tense," Malfoy murmured. "You're acting as though the person to blame for the wings isn't dead."

Harry tried to shrug, only to have the wings collide with the mantle, the light above his head, and the carpet beneath him. _Ow. _Rubbing his shoulders, since he didn't want to touch the feathers themselves, he shook his head. "This is something like a wound, that came along at the wrong time and interrupted my life. The sooner they're gone, the better."

Malfoy frowned at him and cocked his head. "You really don't see them as anything more than that?"

"No," Harry said emphatically, and cast another binding spell so that he could get into the kitchen. "Did you want some tea?"

"I want you to stop avoiding the subject." Malfoy followed him into the kitchen and stood there, watching Harry as he went through his cupboard to find the materials to brew a cuppa. Well, watching Harry's bowed back and the wings that shielded it from sight, which Harry knew were really all he cared about. "Do you know how beautiful you look with those?"

"No," Harry said again, because he didn't. "Like I said, Malfoy, you'll have your chance to touch them or experiment on them or whatever it is you want to do when I cut them off and donate them to St. Mungo's. But until then, there's really no point in trying to convince me that I look better with them. I know I don't."

There was a sense of blurred movement, and then Malfoy was pressed in against him, reaching out to take hold of one wing. Harry started and tried to move away. He thought for a second that it was having someone he didn't like so close that startled him and triggered his defensive instincts-

"You're already learning some things," Malfoy said to him, voice calm and soothing, the way it had been in hospital when he spread Harry's wing out. His fingers trailed over the edge of the feathers, and Harry gritted his teeth as lightning bolts seemed to leap through his nerves. "Your wings don't like being confined. You don't like me this close to you because birds don't usually like their wings being touched or restrained." He moved his fingers to a slightly different place, where the longer feathers gave way to the smaller ones, and Harry grunted as the pleasure altered to follow him. "You recognize me and my true intentions through my touch."

"Wait, _what_?" The rest had sounded halfway plausible to Harry, although not things he liked to hear. He was not a fucking chicken, or a parrot, or a bloody phoenix, no matter what anyone thought. He tried to flick his wing out of Malfoy's hand, and Malfoy let him go, only to lay his hand flat on the wing in a caress a second later. Harry felt his eyes close in spite of himself, but he forced them back open and glared at Malfoy under his fringe. "What the fuck do you mean?"

"Phoenixes," Malfoy said, as if reciting from a book, "are creatures of truth, of purity, and of light. They won't come to someone who's foul in the bottom of his heart, even if he's lying to himself and thinks he has good intentions. Your wings are functioning the same way, although being wings and with you resisting them the way you have, the way they can tell you the truth about someone is limited. So they do it by touch. I know the Healers touched you, and you didn't feel the pleasure that you do from _this_." He curled his fingers sideways in a scratch.

Harry jutted his hips out before he could stop himself. He reached for his harshest tone in consequence. If he could get Malfoy to jump and leave the house in offense, then he might get Malfoy to forget that he'd seen Harry's face as red as that. "So the only thing these wings can tell me is who'd like to fuck me. Real useful. And you can forget about it, by the way, Malfoy."

Malfoy shook his head, his smile deepening, darkening. Maddening. "They would react far differently if I intended to fuck you over," he said quietly, and stepped closer. His hips were about an inch away from Harry's, and that was _not _fine. Harry would have moved away, but he was trapped between the counter and Malfoy, and the wings were fighting against the binding spell again and threatening to trip him up if he moved faster. "They would have alerted you with pain if one of the Healers working on you had intended to cast a curse. The wings are alerting you, when _I _touch them, to the presence of someone who wants you. Just wants you."

Harry sighed and ran a hand through his fringe. He tried not to notice that the hand was shaking, or that Malfoy's eyes were locked on it, now. Malfoy reached out and took it, spreading his fingers as he had the feathers. Harry shook his head. "You've never shown this before, so it has something to do with the wings, right?"

"They were what made me notice you." In the dim shadow cast over them by the way that Harry's right wing arched, Malfoy's eyes looked dim, too, cool with a light that Harry had never seen before. He flipped Harry's hand over and sucked hard at a vein there, making Harry close his eyes and catch his balance against the counter. "I don't know if I ever would have without them."

Harry almost smiled. Malfoy was being a lot more honest than Harry had thought he ever would. Of course, his conception of Malfoy's honesty didn't include "saying that he wants to fuck me in the middle of my kitchen."

Then he shook his head and strong-armed Malfoy backwards, bringing the wing down as a barrier between them when Malfoy looked like he was going to insist. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not interested."

Malfoy smiled. It might have looked charming, but Harry thought that the lessons he'd taken years ago in How to Smirk had rendered him incapable of that. It was sinister, and that was all. "Did I mention that phoenixes encourage honesty because they're honest creatures themselves?" he murmured. "Your reactions have their own truth, Potter. Would you have responded this strongly without _some _level of interest in me?"

Harry shook his head with a grimace. He'd slept with a few blokes, now, although that wasn't something he was always eager to tell other people, what with the _Prophet _on the hunt for new and titillating material concerning Harry Potter. He'd also dated women. He'd wondered if that made him bent or bi or what, but as work got more demanding, he'd thrown the whole question in the bin of "things I don't have time for."

"I'm interested in the way that I'm interested in chocolate cake even when I know that I shouldn't have any more," he said, and fended off Malfoy's hand as it attempted to make a play for his mouth. "But not more than that, no. Not when the person only wants me for my wings."

Malfoy moved away from him fast enough that Harry felt as though he'd fallen. He braced himself with a flutter of his wings-

_Fuck! Bloody stupid things, I don't want to get used to using them-_

And watched as Malfoy considered him from the distance of the kitchen doorway, his eyes tilted up at the corners with the force of his stare. A moment later, the corners of his smile rose to match them.

"You have no idea how you look, Potter," Malfoy whispered, and his voice seemed soft and hot and intimate even though he was no longer standing right beside Harry. "It started with the wings, but it's the whole package that interests me."

Harry shut his eyes and rubbed one hand over his flushed face. He was remembering what Ron had said to him right before they left the Ministry, that he was having a delayed reaction to the shock of surviving Rosier's spell and waking up half a phoenix. He should rest, he knew. He should close his eyes and try to get a grip on how much his life had changed.

He should not even be _considering _sleeping with Malfoy, the way it seemed he was.

"I would make it good for you. So good." When he looked again, Malfoy had come a step closer. His eyes were open, quivering with light, the lashes practically vibrating. "You have no idea how I could make you feel."

"Yes, I do," Harry felt compelled to point out. "I've felt the way you touched my wings."

Malfoy made a soft sound, and then crept forwards several paces more. "And the rest of your body? I'd like to touch your hair. There aren't any feathers growing in it, did you know? And that means that it would feel different. I want to taste your mouth, and your skin. I want to count how many scars you have. The St. Mungo's staff say it's a lot, but the papers say they're lying. No way to find out for myself except by counting. And I want to watch you spread those beautiful wings and-"

Harry interrupted at that point, because it was do that or be consumed by his own burning lust. "That's another problem. We couldn't have sex easily with those damn things flopping everywhere."

Malfoy paused and gave him an odd half-smile. "You mean that you haven't come up with solutions for that? I have."

Harry resisted the temptation to wrap his wings around himself. For one thing, he wasn't cold, thank you. For another, he wasn't going to get used to them as-as anything. As protection, or blanket, or anything. They _weren't staying._

And he didn't need to hide from Malfoy. What he said was tempting, but it couldn't overpower Harry's reason if he didn't let it. He considered Malfoy, and yeah, he was good-looking enough, now that he didn't spend all his time sneering about how poor Harry's best friends were. Harry would have been reluctant to trust him normally, but Ron knew he was here. If Malfoy left the house and something suspicious happened to Harry, even two months later, Ron would hunt Malfoy down and take him apart. Competently.

And a feeling of reckless curiosity was stirring in Harry despite himself, a curiosity that he'd had no time to indulge during the last few months of tracking the last Death Eaters, listening to reports, going on wild careening chases through forests and bogs and across moors, punishing informants who turned on them. It had been _ages _since he'd had a bit of fun.

"Why not?" he asked, and held out his hand. Malfoy's eyes widened as though he hadn't expected that, and he stood perfectly still. Harry took the time to absorb him in silence. Malfoy's hair was white-gold, bound neatly back. His brewer's robes of acid-green weren't designed to flatter anyone, but Malfoy pulled it off. He had bright eyes, full lips, a bit narrower face than Harry usually found attractive but different enough now to be intriguing.

And he was blinking, hesitant, caught off-guard. Harry thought he'd like that.

_Besides, wings shouldn't interfere with us sucking each other off._

"You mean it," Malfoy said, and licked his lips.

Harry nodded, and the wings lifted above his head and arched out to either side as if they were fans. He ignored them. He probably looked like some bloody bird-of-paradise showing off for Malfoy, but that would have to be Malfoy's problem, not his. "Yeah. Now get over here before I change my mind."

Harry had never seen anyone cross a room so fast. In less than a second, Malfoy's hands were on his cheeks and he was bending down to take Harry's mouth.

Harry met him with a surge of challenge, of curiosity and mischief and daring. _Let's see how this goes._


	5. Like a Dance, Like a Battle

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five-Like a Dance, Like a Battle_

Harry was a little irritated that Malfoy moved ahead of him into the bedroom as if he knew where he was going, though he'd _certainly _never been in Harry's house before. So he took the opportunity to pin Malfoy against the wall right beside the door and kiss him to the point that he could learn the different tastes of his teeth, and Malfoy was breathless and gasping as if he hadn't expected that, his eyes wide and dazed.

Harry pulled back, smiled at Malfoy, and started undressing him. He would take longer, since Harry had fewer clothes to get off.

And his wings had pulled back and hung, trembling, behind his shoulders now, as if they wanted to make having sex with Malfoy as easy as possible. Harry rolled his eyes, but didn't stop taking Malfoy's clothes off. If he was going to fuck him, he was going to do it in _style_.

Malfoy finally seemed to recover from that kiss and get a good grip on what was happening. He reached out and ran a hand down Harry's arm to his wrist, half-caressing, and then shook his head. "I could do that for you," he whispered. "Wouldn't you rather that I did?"

_Not exactly, _Harry thought. His life had been thrown completely off-track by what had happened today, as though he'd learned that all his work with the Aurors was a dream and he was still stuck back in Hogwarts with his adult life ahead of him. He wanted to take control of something, and it might as well be this.

He nipped Malfoy's fingers in answer, making him yelp, and then returned to stripping the pants off him. Malfoy stepped out of them at last, all of him long and lean and pale, even his cock, as though the blood Harry knew was flowing to it couldn't make much difference in its color. Harry smiled and reached out, scratching lightly at Malfoy's ribs and flanks to see what made him twitch.

Malfoy abruptly seized his hands and whirled around so that they fell to the bed with him beneath Harry. Harry wondered why for a moment, blinking, but then his shoulders shifted and he felt the stupid, massive wings. _Wouldn't want to lie with these pinned beneath me. Right._

That made him wonder how he was going to get to sleep tonight, since he usually preferred to lie on his back, but Malfoy startled him out of the self-pity he was sinking into by grabbing his face and kissing him. Harry gave in enthusiastically to that part. Malfoy was a talented kisser, and he made Harry feel like writhing and kissing back just because.

Then Malfoy's hands ran over his shoulders and onto his wings.

The pleasure that poured through him then was molten, and actually made his skin feel hotter. Harry groaned into Malfoy's mouth and wished it didn't feel so good when Malfoy pulled at some of the fluffy little feathers. He thought they might be called pinfeathers, but that fact vanished into the rush of lust that Malfoy was inducing just by pulling on them.

"That's what this is," Malfoy said, pulling back and looking at him again. "Honest desire. I couldn't do this to you if I had any intention of hurting you."

Harry glared at him. He didn't particularly want to be reminded that Malfoy only wanted him because of the wings. He was trying to have _fun _here. "What was your brilliant idea for how to do this?" he asked, sitting back and waving his wand to peel off the panel of cloth he'd used to substitute for a shirt.

Malfoy watched him with half-lidded eyes and didn't answer. Harry rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers in front of Malfoy's eyes, making him start. "I realize that they send you into a hypnotic trance of lust," Harry drawled, "but could you try to pay attention to something besides my wings?"

Malfoy laughed at him, but the laughter was warm, and Harry was smiling by the time that Malfoy reached down to help him pull off his trousers and his pants. "I _do _have brilliant ideas," Malfoy said against his jaw, biting him hard enough to make Harry arch and almost forget about getting naked. "One of which is to lie down on my back and have you ride me."

Harry blinked. Then he said, "Ride you on your cock?"

"Mmmm." Malfoy watched him with that half-lidded look again, but this time, Harry thought his gaze was at least lingering on Harry's face and his chest and cock as much as on the wings. "Do you have an objection to that?"

"No," Harry said, and then more strongly, "No." It wasn't the way he'd pictured it-he'd thought something less athletic, like sucking each other's cocks-but this way would probably work, too, especially since his wings seemed inclined to stay back and above his head right now, and he didn't have a tail to interfere.

"Good," Malfoy said, and twisted up, and suddenly his fingers were much fiercer than before in Harry's hair, on his shoulders, on his back between the wings. Harry gasped and went with it, scraping back when he could. Malfoy _really _liked fingernails everywhere, it seemed: on his nipples, on his throat, in his ears. He turned his head and bit Harry on the cheek when he did that.

Malfoy had brought his own lube, a tube of which he Summoned from his robe where it lay on the floor, and Harry had to laugh. "Were you _that _confident that you'd get lucky?" he had to ask as he took the lube and opened his legs, reaching back to work on himself.

"Mmmm," Malfoy said again, and then raked him with an admiring glance that made Harry's smile break out when he hadn't told it to. "Not exactly. I carry healing salves of all kinds in case I'm called suddenly to a bedside where someone's suffering and I don't have the appropriate potion with me."

That made sense, Harry supposed. And the lube was thick and gloppy on his fingers, but warmer than a lot of those he'd used, and he had to admit, he felt _good _like this, sliding his fingers in for a stretch and then another and then another, while Malfoy watched him like he could let the world burn, as long as Harry kept on doing that. A little grunt slipped out of his lips in spite of himself.

"You do look stunning." Malfoy sounded as if he was surprised about that. Of course, Harry thought as he arched his back and drove his fingers deeper, he would have to be, at least if he was someone who only wanted Harry because of his wings.

_Well, let him want me because of the wings, then. He'll see that they only get in the way or don't add anything to the sex soon, and in the meantime, I could use something to take my mind off the damn things._

They ruffled around his head just then, as if they'd heard his thoughts and were offended. Harry rolled his eyes and leaned forwards, angling his body so that he could reach further without straining his wrist. He wouldn't fall into the trap of thinking about them as usual parts of himself, no matter how tempting it was or how happy it would make Malfoy. In fact, that it would make Malfoy happy was a great reason _not _to do it-

And then his fingers finally went deep enough, and Harry twisted his neck, shutting his eyes as pleasure flooded him. He felt the wings beating wildly above his head, but they did it so lightly that they didn't unbalance him; it just felt like a pleasant breeze stirring his hair. He thought he could put up with that.

"God, Potter."

Malfoy grabbed him around the waist abruptly and all but tore his hands away from his arse. Harry opened his eyes, ready to protest, but it was a little hard to do that when you were being so thoroughly kissed that the person doing it could probably taste his tonsils. He ended up letting his head hang off to the side, grunting as Malfoy kissed him nearly senseless, then lay back and grabbed the salve. By the time Harry opened his eyes and got oriented again, Malfoy's cock was glistening.

"Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?" Malfoy let his fingers play the length of his cock, his eyes shining at Harry.

"Only you would call touching your cock an _honor_," Harry said, rolling his eyes, but he reached out and pulled it off Malfoy's belly. Malfoy's mouth fell open, his breath coming out in a rattling little hiss. Harry thought about telling him that that meant something obscene in Parseltongue.

On the other hand, he didn't look as if he needed it. He fought already not to come in Harry's palms, Harry thought, with a small smirk. Well, that was fine. Harry had had that battle a few times himself.

And he _liked _causing that reaction in someone else.

He started to rise so he could sit on Malfoy's cock-

And the wings beat, lifting him entirely from the bed for a few seconds. When Harry yelled and tried to fold them down, they descended like a bloody tent on his shoulders, enclosing him and Malfoy in a cocoon of warmth, and Harry sat down hard on Malfoy's bony hips.

On the other hand, Malfoy's cock was _almost _where Harry wanted it, just a few inches off, and he wriggled back and onto it with a satisfied sigh.

And Malfoy was staring at him with eyes so big that Harry thought he'd hurt himself and his voice babbling along at high speed, while his hands scraped and rustled on Harry's hips as though they belonged there. "God, you," he said, while his teeth shone in the red and gold light refracted through the feathers. "_Yes_." His hips snapped up in what felt like an entirely involuntary thrust.

Harry bent down and kissed him, mashing lips to lips as he concentrated on riding Malfoy and lifting his wings at the same time. The wings went high again, beating steadily in the air, but luckily not hard enough to lift him off. The breeze blew Malfoy's hair back and increased his babble to the point that Harry didn't think he could recognize individual words anymore.

And after that...

Well, Harry would have said that it went like a breeze, but Ron would have punched him for that comment and he didn't think Malfoy would like it, either. He found a rhythm sooner than he thought he would have. His hips worked back and forth in a series of rolls, and Malfoy surged up to match him, and the wings flapped. Harry found he could ignore them most of the time. On the downstroke, they didn't do much except appear in the corners of his eyes, and on the upstroke, they vanished entirely. They were just there, and they didn't interfere in the way of him getting a good fucking, which was all he wanted right at the moment.

The bedspread was rough beneath his knees, Malfoy's hands warm, his teeth and the lips that pressed against his hard. Malfoy's cock was just long enough to jab him in the prostate sometimes, and Harry did the rest on his own, working himself down, working himself back, working himself forwards. He hissed a little when he felt his orgasm approaching. Horrible as it would be to say, since he didn't believe in gratifying Malfoy's ego, he was still sad that this was reaching its end.

Then the pleasure surged through him, and his legs locked, and he sprayed Malfoy's stomach and chest. He looked down, secretly hoping that Malfoy had swallowed a little, or that he was upset.

Malfoy was watching him with eyes that shone like light through a stained glass window, and when he arched up and grunted and came, he never closed them. Harry was the one who ended up looking away.

He started to rest his hands on Malfoy's shoulders so he could pull away, but Malfoy took that as the chance to reach up and capture his head instead, tugging him into a kiss that went on and on and on. Long past the point where Malfoy's tongue lapped and scraped at his lips and did small soft things that made his eyelids droop, Harry gave up. He collapsed on the bed over Malfoy, his wings falling down to cover them again.

_That must be hot as hell. _The wings still shed a softly simmering heat that Harry thought would be uncomfortable when they were both sweaty. Again he tried to roll to the side, but Malfoy's arms came around him, fitting carefully along the ribcage and stroking the sheaths where the wings began between the shoulder blades.

"Stay," Malfoy whispered. "Oh, just, just like that, just like this, so good..." He crooned the last words.

_I'm the half-bird, not you, _Harry wanted to say, but he was warm and he was tired and it felt good. He ended up tumbling off to sleep on the git's chest with Malfoy still inside him and his wings still covering their bodies in a canvas of light.

_Malfoy likes the strangest things._


	6. Escaping the Heat

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Escaping the Heat_

Harry woke up sweltering the next morning, and tried without thought to lift the hot blanket off him. It lifted only a short distance before something tugged on his back, and he rolled his eyes without opening them and kicked. Sure, he'd had sex with Malfoy yesterday, but that was no reason for the arse to be so bloody possessive—

"Ow!"

He'd tugged on his wing, he realized finally, when it rose above his body and then collapsed back against it with a flutter and a rustle. And it made his body so hot that he thought he might literally burn up from the inside. He rolled over with a muffled oath and found that Malfoy's arms were wrapped about him, too, and so were the sheets. No wonder he'd felt the way he had. And if the wings stayed, he might not need blankets ever again.

_They're not staying. Get stupid thoughts like that out of your mind right now. _One thing Harry had learned from the Healers was that your thoughts could affect your behavior. For example, if he went on thinking about how unexpectedly pretty Malfoy was, blinking his eyes under his ruffled blond hair and sitting up with an abstracted expression, then he might do something unforgivably stupid. Like letting him stay.

"Want breakfast?" Harry asked. He figured he owed the git that much hospitality before he kicked him out. He'd done an awfully good job of relaxing Harry yesterday, and he'd given him some intriguing information that might or might not be truth.

"Mmmm," said Malfoy, which seemed to be his all-purpose response to everything, and pulled Harry in towards him with a suggestive roll of his hips that Harry tried to pretend wasn't affecting him as much as Malfoy, from his smile, knew it was. "Want your mouth."

Harry felt his skin prickle with what could have been either a blush or heat from the wings. At the moment, he wasn't in much hurry to analyze which.

"Not possible this morning," he said lightly, and tried to back away. The wings flared and came up between them, apparently thinking that what he _really _wanted was a way to stop looking at Malfoy. Harry paused, sighed, and cast a spell that disentangled them and blew them back over his head. "But a bowl of cereal would be. Or toast. I'm afraid that I don't have any posh poached quail or whatever it is that you usually eat."

"You've seen me naked, and you wouldn't stoop to going out and ordering quail if I asked you to?" Malfoy shook his head. He seemed endlessly amused by something. At least that meant he was taking the rejection of more sex better than Harry had thought he would. "Well. If you'll give me a feather—humanely drawn, this time—then I'll be on my way."

Harry stared at him, and tried to forget about the way that the wings were hanging above him like mops. "What? I gave you feathers yesterday. Aren't they enough to use in potions or whatever you want with them?"

"I'm going to analyze them to try and figure out what happened to you during Rosier's spell, and what you should do next." Malfoy had reached for his robes, but he paused now to run Harry over with a leisurely stare. "I hope to have something for you, if only confirmation of how much those wings differ from an ordinary phoenix's wings, by the time that I come back tonight."

"You want me to meet in your office?" Harry was trying to keep up with the quicksilver mental steps Malfoy seemed to be taking, but he didn't really see how he could. "And why can't the feathers I gave you yesterday suffice?"

"I want to see if there's a difference between the bloodied ones and ones that aren't. And don't be silly. You should stay here, practice with the wings, and rest." Malfoy cast a Cleaning Charm on his pants and started pulling them on. "I'll come back here this evening and we can discuss it then. I'll even bring dinner."

"Sorry to say," Harry said, "this is the only time you're ever seeing the inside of my house, Malfoy."

Malfoy flashed him a sideways, disbelieving look without stopping his dressing. "Really."

He was allergic to question marks. It drove Harry _mad_. "Yes," he said. "The sex was fun and all, but I don't want to do it again with someone who only wants me for my wings."

"Like it or not, the wings are going to affect any public perception of you for a time at least," Malfoy said, his tone so logical that Harry had to work past it to think about his words. "At least I'm honest about what I see and what I like. Would you really want someone who pities you but doesn't want to show it dating you? If I'm right about the nature of the wings, they would reveal that when he or she touched you anyway, and that might be a shock."

Harry shook his head furiously. There was common sense to be found here somewhere, even if Malfoy kept dodging it. "I don't plan to date _anyone _for the next few months until I can find out how to get rid of these."

"And I'll help you find that," Malfoy said. "Spending time in close quarters with you would help, though."

"I can meet you at the office," Harry said. "Not here."

The frost in his voice seemed to have finally convinced Malfoy, although he regarded Harry with a funny little smile for a bit before he nodded. "All right," he said. "If that's what you want."

"That, and the wings gone," Harry said, reaching for a set of old robes that he generally wore after he'd had a shower. Only when he tried to put them on did he realize the problem, and cursed as he sliced off the back and left a long strip of bare skin down to his tailbone. Of course, he thought glumly as the wings settled around him again, being cold was hardly a problem. "That most of all."

"Then you won't mind me coming around," Malfoy said, and gave him a bright smile before he wandered out of the room.

"What? No!" Harry ran after him, angry enough to spit. Malfoy was examining the kitchen as though he wondered where the breakfast Harry had offered him was. He turned around and looked at Harry peacefully as he came up behind. "I want to meet you in the office, not here," Harry said, pronouncing each word separately so that Malfoy couldn't pretend he hadn't heard. "And I want you not to come back."

"But all the tests that we'll need to do," Malfoy murmured, his hands finding a place to rest on Harry's hips. "You would really rather do them in my office instead of the comfort of your own home? You really want to spend most of your day at St. Mungo's?"

"Yes," Harry said, although he wasn't sure of it after all when Malfoy was touching him like that. He shook his head angrily at a moment later and stepped back, slapping Malfoy's hands away. "And stop touching me. I'm not your property."

Malfoy sighed. "I know." Before Harry could bristle over his regretful tone, he abruptly put on a professional mask and said, "All right. I should have all the feathers I'll need, but you wouldn't mind giving me one more? For comparison purposes?"

Harry grimaced and reached up. Malfoy caught his hand. "Gently," he said. "Or I'll just need another one. Do you want me to pluck it for you?"

"I think I'm the one who knows whether it would hurt or not," Harry said through gritted teeth.

"You don't care about the wings, though, or the ways they're part of you," Malfoy said, with a chiding look that made Harry want to bite him. "You've proven that by the careless way you pulled out those other feathers. I think I can see—ah!"

Harry stared. There was a tiny feather in Malfoy's fingers, and he didn't know how _that _had happened. He hadn't felt it pulled away. He looked suspiciously at the wing, and couldn't locate the place it had come from. He shook his head.

"What?" Malfoy asked, and his voice was gentle, not mocking. "Is it so impossible that someone could touch you without hurting you? I thought the Healers did that yesterday."

"Yeah, but—" Harry shrugged. He wanted to say that he knew how best to touch his own wings, which was silly now that he thought about it, because he didn't think of them as his. Maybe Malfoy was right about that much, at least. "Anyway. Take them away and study them. And don't think that you need to come back here or ask me for more sex."

Malfoy held up one hand and smiled. "All right. I should have some preliminary results in a few hours, once I've seen the way they react to test potions compared to ordinary phoenix feathers. Do you want me to firecall you when I have those results?"

"Send me an owl." Harry folded his arms and tried to radiate menace so that Malfoy would fucking _leave _already. He had to concede that it was probably hard to do that when the wings were fanning lazily behind him, stirring the air and sending it spiraling around him in warm gusts. He was like a peacock, only without the excuse that the wings were anything half so natural. "That'll be fine."

Malfoy nodded, and his face had become serious, though he'd been so playful so far that Harry didn't know how he should take that. "Listen, Potter. You're not ugly with those wings, and you're not a freak. I slept with you because I wanted to, but there's more to it than that. If you wind up with those wings for life, I hope that you'll be satisfied and content with yourself."

"Life advice? From Potions master Malfoy?" Harry touched his chest and hoped that he could mime shock when the wings remained high. "I'm not sure that I can stand the generosity you're pouring on me."

Malfoy's smile flashed. "That's exactly why I didn't try to tell you that before," he murmured, and slipped out the door.

Harry stood watching him go, then shook his head and sighed. He didn't know what Malfoy might find, or how soon he might do it. In the meantime, he should eat something, and then figure out how fine a control he could exercise over the bloody wings without making them part of him.

He turned around, and one of the wings whacked into a cupboard and half-knocked it open. Harry grimaced at the small flash of pain that traveled through him.

_Yes. Control of some kind is necessary._

* * *

Several hours later, Harry leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. Even that wasn't comfortable, not with the wings flapping around his face and feathers crushed if he leaned too hard, but he needed to rest.

He had tried and tried to make the wings obey him without the aid of spells. It didn't work, except to fold them, which he had done enough times by now to find easy. They would spring open when he was thinking about something else, though, such as when he thought about Hyperion Rosier, wishing that he was still alive so Harry could kill him again, and they ruffled out with the feathers sticking up like spearheads to defend him. Or when he thought about Malfoy, and then the wings shone with a subtle light.

He couldn't sit comfortably in chairs, as he'd learned yesterday in Fletcher's office. They would extend and bulge behind him, and half the time he sat on their edges. It would have to be stools until the blessed and longed-for day when he got rid of them.

He couldn't lie on them at all, and they got trapped in robes. He had finally managed to contrive a sort of solution by turning one of his shirts backwards and manipulating the sleeves with magic, so that they covered his arms and the shirt covered his chest, but that left the shirt prone to fall off and the wings still hanging forwards uncontrollably over his shoulders. Harry thought he'd have to use a tie around the waist to secure the shirt.

He _shed. _The air was full of drifting dust and tiny particles from his wings. When he shook them at one point, trying to get them far enough away from his robes that they wouldn't dangle, feather-puffs came loose, red and gold in color. Harry had cast a spell that Vanished them, but ten minutes later there were more. He stared hopelessly at them and wondered what the hell he should do about that, and whether any of his friends were allergic to birds.

How could Malfoy and the Healers react so calmly when they looked at these stupid, freakish things? Well, Malfoy's reaction wasn't really calm, but he didn't feel the brewing mixture of frustration and fear and anger that Harry did.

What _good _were they?

Harry stepped out of the house and stood in the gardens. At least the wings couldn't knock everything over when he was outside. He stared up at the sky and shook his head. He was starting to see why large birds lived on the tops of mountains or out in open country where there were no trees to knock into.

The sky shone, high and distant and blue. A few smaller birds had been chirping when he came outside, but they'd stopped, probably because they were intimidated by his wings. _Or envious, _Harry had to think, with his first smile since that morning.

He kept looking up. A small cloud drifted past. From this position, it looked as if a single one of his large feathers could block it out.

_Well, why the hell not? You know you'll always wonder. And you probably won't get far, anyway._

Harry tugged the wings out to their fullest extent and began to run. His garden was wide enough for him to do that for about fifty feet, and then started to narrow. Harry beat the wings up and down, not sure what result he most hoped for. If he crashed, at least that would prove to everyone that these stupid things might look pretty but were good for nothing—

Warm wind blew around him, at the same moment as the warmth in his skin exploded up and flames blew behind him. What emerged was more light than heat, so Harry didn't have to worry about his garden burning—

And then he was off the ground.

There was a single, incredulous moment when Harry understood that he wasn't flying so much with the wings as with magic and the fire that continued streaming behind him, like a Muggle jet—

And then he didn't care.

This was the kind of ascent he had felt when he was eleven, the first time he rode a broom, and never since: a smooth, instinctive rise, soaring to meet the sky without worrying about the ground under his feet or how high he was, not paying as much attention to the things that helped him fly as to the power in his own body. The wings beat strongly around him. Harry didn't try to think about what they were doing, or the names of all the winds he was catching. Or might be catching, given that the flames and the magic were the things bearing him up.

He was _flying_. He tossed his head back and laughed aloud.

This was where the wings were meant to function. They didn't dangle uselessly around him _now_. They needed to droop to cup the air ahead and the flames behind and hurl him forwards; they needed their wide extent because Harry knew there was no way they could have borne the weight of his body otherwise, even with the help of the magic. Their larger feathers ruffled out. The small feathers did the same thing, and Harry reckoned they helped somehow, though he still didn't know how. But this was—

This was—

This was motion, and air, and coolness flooding him along with the heat, and flight.

He wheeled up and around, and he looked down and saw the forest that surrounded his house spreading out in misshapen lumps of green, and the wind whipped the laughter from his mouth.


	7. Fact Finding Mission

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Fact-Finding Mission_

"Most of what I told you about the wings is true."

Harry paused with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. Malfoy had owled him around one—soon after Harry had come back from the flight he was determinedly not thinking about—saying that he had some experimental results already, but that they were too complicated to explain by a message. Reluctantly, Harry had wrapped his wings in a binding spell and then dropped a clumsy glamour over them. He'd never been good at glamours, since his curse scar burned through most of the ones he put on it and he was piss-poor at changing his very recognizable eye color. But he could manage one that made him look as if he was carrying a heavy crate on his back instead of the wings, and so he'd got safely beyond his wards and Apparated to St. Mungo's. As long as he kept his head down, not too many people looked at him.

Malfoy had gestured for him to remove the glamour the instant he entered the git's office, and Harry didn't think he'd imagined the bastard's indrawn breath or the way he relaxed when he could see the wings again, his eyes bright with heat. Well, fine. If Malfoy wanted to be creepy that way, then Harry would just have to be cross and demanding back.

And _not _reveal that he'd flown this morning. That was information for the Healers helping him to work on ways of removing the wings, not for Malfoy, who was only doing research with the feathers.

"_Most_," Harry said.

Malfoy nodded. "There are some differences from ordinary feathers, revealed by the potions I tested them in." He reached out and captured a sheaf of notes from his nearby desk. Seeing them, along with all the other delicate stacks of paper everywhere and the boiling cauldrons and balanced flasks, made Harry glad that he'd retained the spell binding his wings to his back. They didn't seem to mind it so much, only twitching now and then. The flight must have exhausted them.

_And I need to stop acting as if they're people with their own opinions._

"They don't seem to have the inborn fire that would renew them in a burst of flame when the phoenix gets old enough," Malfoy said, and extended a piece of parchment to Harry. Harry took a quick glance at the notes and numbers that covered it, and shook his head. They meant nothing to him. Malfoy practically purred. The idiot liked being useful, Harry thought—or seen as useful and an expert and powerful, which wasn't at all the same thing. "I aged two of them in a potion that makes years pass for objects in a few seconds, and they simply withered. But then I placed them _separately _in the potion, and they renewed themselves halfway through the cycle." He paused and eyed Harry. "Instead of molting them all off and then regrowing them at once, I think what you'll see is individual feathers burning up when they get bent or broken or ragged, and new ones appearing."

"Wonderful," Harry said sourly. He wanted to ask if that would still happen once he cut off the wings and donated them for the education of future generations of Healers, but he had a feeling he knew what Malfoy's answer would be. The feathers had become new when separated from Harry, after all. He took another bite of the sandwich that Malfoy had made for him—some kind of delicate fish—before he answered. "And what you said about the wings telling me when people are honest?"

Malfoy grinned. The expression was so normal that Harry stared at him before he could stop himself. Malfoy noticed, and the smile turned a shade more private before he answered. "I had one of my apprentices—a lad with a good turn for lying—touch a feather while he talked about his progress in experimental potions. No good. The feather turned black and curled away from him. When he didn't start speaking until after he'd touched one, then his face turned purple and his voice stopped and he couldn't go on at all." Malfoy bent towards Harry insistently. "When the feathers are in greater clusters, the way they are on the full wings, I think they can make people _want _to speak the truth. It's not something I would have considered that I owed you before I saw and touched your wings."

"Seems to me," Harry said deliberately, with another bite of the sandwich in the middle to make Malfoy wait, "that there's a _lot _of things you would never have done in the last day if not for the wings."

Malfoy smiled at him and put down the page of notes, reaching out so that he could slide one palm down the side of his wing, over the small feathers that stood up there. Harry shut his eyes and made a tiny noise before he could stop himself.

"So beautiful," Malfoy whispered. "And no, I doubt I would have got up the courage to follow you home and fuck you yesterday if not for the wings."

Harry nodded and reached up to remove Malfoy's hand from the wings, because he couldn't think with it there. The pleasure that spiraled through him was like molten gold pouring through a pipe. God, it was so _good_, but now that he knew Malfoy only wanted him for these stupid additions to his body—

"But I've thought for a long time that I'd like to get to know you better," Malfoy said quietly, dodging Harry's motion so that he could keep his hand on the wings. "Conviction that you wouldn't welcome such a thing held me back."

"_Only _that?" Harry opened one eye to study him.

Malfoy laughed softly. "All right, and also the fact that I don't enjoy being called an evil git every moment of my life. But you've done a lot for me, things I appreciated, although I know you didn't do them _specifically _for me. Saving my life. Defeating the Dark Lord. Ignoring me so that we could both get on with our lives in the year right after the war. Giving testimony that helped keep my mother free. Hunting down the Death Eaters, who threatened me at one point for being a traitor. Killing Fenrir Greyback."

Harry frowned at him. "But you know that it wasn't—I wasn't thinking about how you'd respond to that, right? Just that it was the right thing to do?"

"I know," Malfoy said. "And I prefer that, actually. If I had had someone interested in saving my life just so that he could be my personal hero, I think I'd resent him." He shook his head with a faint grin. "No rational reason for me to do so, but I wanted—I needed—some time to grow up on my own, away from my parents and away from Hogwarts and away from everyone who wanted to watch out for me or thought they knew better than me." He studied Harry with a jaundiced look for a second. "You fit yourself into that last group a time or two. I know that now."

"Yeah, I did," Harry said shortly. He didn't like being reminded of it. He really hadn't known much more than Malfoy when he was sixteen or seventeen, after all. "Anyway. That doesn't explain wanting to sleep with me."

Malfoy stroked up and down the edge of the wing, and Harry had to fight not to close his eyes and moan with pleasure. "The way that I was reminded of you, the way that I was able to watch you from afar instead of being confronted with you at every turn, the way you saved me, the way I saw you looking with the wings?" Malfoy murmured. "It's a combination of all those things. And if all those things aren't enough to qualify someone for sleeping with you, I'm afraid to know what _would _be."

Harry shifted, finally standing so that he could tear the wing away from Malfoy's grasp. The feathers stretched out when he stood, pointing back at Malfoy. Harry didn't want to think about what that meant. "It's not a matter of qualifications," he said. "Just that—if I wasn't stressed yesterday, I would never have slept with you."

Malfoy still had the ability to look smooth and polished with nothing more than a sneer. "Of course not. Clearly my technique disappointed you."

"It's not _that_," Harry said, and leaned his head against the enchanted window in Malfoy's office, watching fish swim about in a dark green void of water that might have been Hogwarts's lake. _Defending my life and choices to Malfoy. After I slept with him. After I had wings. I must have stolen fire or something in a previous life to have it this weird now. _

"Then explain what it is." From the sound, Malfoy had come to his feet behind him and stood with arms folded. Then Harry rolled his eyes at himself. _Really. I think I'm that perceptive about Malfoy? I don't know him well._

He turned around and found that Malfoy was indeed standing exactly like that. It did nothing to improve his temper. "It was something I wanted to do, and which was fun," Harry said. "But not anything that can last."

"Why not?" Malfoy took a step nearer. "I've expressed my opinion that, for me at least, it runs considerably deeper than a momentary attraction to your wings. What else would you need to convince you that I'm someone you can trust?"

"That you had done this before I got the wings," Harry said. "Sorry, but the coincidence is too great."

"You look beautiful with them," Malfoy said. "And they're fascinating, and you were right there in front of me, and I like touching them. Plus all the other things that built up over time." He paused, staring at Harry. "I won't lie and pretend that the wings had nothing to do with it, although it's more than that. I don't think I _could _lie, not when the wings encourage honesty like they do."

Harry regained control of himself. He shouldn't have let it slip away in the first place. "What else did you find out about the wings?" he asked.

"The feathers are larger than the feathers on the wings of a true phoenix," Malfoy said, allowing the change of subject, although his eyes still lingered on Harry in a way that said he wished they could do something else. Harry turned his head to the side and stared out the enchanted window again, while the wings strained against the binding spell. "And warmer, too. Most people report only a slight heat when they touch a phoenix, unless they frighten it or the bird is on the verge of rebirth. But yours are warm enough that it's not uncomfortable for you to go without a robe, is it?"

"I'm only going without a robe because of the position they put me in," Harry snapped, and the wings spread out to the sides without his permission. Only a quick spell from Malfoy rescued the vials they knocked down.

"Of course," Malfoy said. "But it means that you're not shivering."

Harry shrugged. "We knew about the heat already. Have you discovered any theories for why Rosier's spell might have changed me this way instead of roasting me or sparing me?" He cast another binding spell, ruthlessly stuffing the wings under it when they tried to pinwheel open in objection.

"I think it passed into your magical core," Malfoy said. "The Shield Charm probably had nothing to do with it. And in your core, or in your soul, if you like, the spell discovered traits that allowed it to make the transformation."

"Traits?" Harry caught Malfoy's eye in his reflection in the window.

"Honesty," Malfoy said. "Integrity. That desire to do the right thing you spoke of."

Harry shook his head, slowly. "I'm not _that _honest. And I rejoiced in Hyperion Rosier's death, and I killed Voldemort, and I've done plenty of things that I'm not proud of."

"But you do more right things than someone else, on the average," Malfoy said quietly. "As far as I know, this spell has never been cast on someone who saved the world from a Dark Lord before, or died a sacrificial death." He paused. "I think it's the death that's most important, myself. It gives you another similarity to a phoenix."

Harry winced. He hated to think about it that way, but Malfoy might be right. "All right. Any information on how to get rid of them?"

Malfoy stepped towards him the way he had in Harry's house yesterday, the blurring motion that was much faster than it looked. He reached out and caressed Harry's wing again, and Harry answered with the same soft sound, his head tilting back before he could stop himself. Malfoy's other hand caressed his throat.

"Consider keeping them," Malfoy whispered into his ear, breath hotter than the constant simmer at Harry's back. "From what I can find, it may already be too late to get rid of them without great pain. You could simply regrow them if you cut them off. If you can fly—"

"I can," Harry said, and then cursed himself. He hadn't meant to tell Malfoy that. He blamed the stroking of the bastard's hand, and moved away, mantling nervously, his wings standing out stiff and straight against the force of the binding spell.

"You can?" Malfoy's eyes were enormous when Harry glanced back at him, his voice breathless. "Can I see?"

Harry found himself swaying towards Malfoy without wanting to. His fascination with Harry was seductive, in a way. _Only in a way. _And he didn't look at Harry as an embarrassment or a freak, the way Harry had thought most people would after he turned into a giant chicken. He wanted—

_He wants things that you don't want to give him._

Harry turned his head away, grinding his teeth and pinching one of the feathers near his neck to calm himself down. It hurt. The pain tugged him further away from the mistake he had almost made.

"Harry?" Malfoy, from the sound, stepped towards him.

"I have an appointment with Healer Redusson," Harry blurted, which was true but not for a few hours, and ran out of the office. He heard something shatter, but Malfoy didn't call after him in anger.

It would have been better if he had.

Harry slowed his run when he came into a side corridor that was empty and closed his eyes. He would have liked to lean back, but once again, he couldn't because of the wings.

What Malfoy had expressed for him might be deeper than a quick, fun shag after all. The wings might be here to stay.

But Harry refused to accept that. His life had changed overnight twice: when he first learned that he was a wizard and when he defeated Voldemort. But he liked who he was now, he liked his life and the patterns that he had settled into. He refused to let something that had happened just yesterday, or the day before yesterday, take precedence for him and switch everything into a new kind of life.

_I want them gone. And Malfoy will be, too, when he realizes that I don't mean to keep them._


	8. Designing the Truth

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Designing the Truth_

"You do look more comfortable with them."

Harry stared at Healer Redusson, then sighed and dropped his head into his hands. "Well, fuck," he muttered. He heard the gasps and titters of half a dozen young mediwizards, but he ignored that. It was good practice for them to get used to someone cursing now, since they would hear a lot worse than that at the bedsides of people they were treating for emergency wounds. "You said that would make it harder for me to get rid of them in the end?" He leaned back and looked at the Healer again.

She gave him a rueful smile. "Yes." She made another chart appear, one full of numbers and notes that Harry understood no more than he had the chart Malfoy used. Harry stared at it, then shrugged. Redusson seemed to realize it did no good and banished it with a little wave of her wand. "The fact that you flew with them means that your body is taking account of them as alternate limbs. And, well—exercise strengthens them, as it does every group of muscles that you work with. It means that you can fly with them more easily, and that you can wield them in other ways, too. Try to fold them down now."

They did it with hardly a thought, Harry found as he focused on the wings and tried to imagine them collapsed against his back. And they didn't stick over his shoulders as much, either. He frowned at Redusson. "They haven't shrunk, have they?" If he was lucky, then they would just get smaller and smaller until they vanished altogether.

"No," Redusson said, though Harry appreciated that she cast a spell to check before she assured him of that. "I'm afraid, Auror Potter, that they've simply folded up more efficiently. You've been learning." She paused. "Now, spread them, but try to stop short of touching the walls with the edges."

Harry focused on his wings, and tried. He didn't like the sensation that moved down his spine when he did, though, as if he was on the verge of a sneeze that was trying to come out through his back. After a few moments, the wings extended and shot out, then trembled to a stop. Harry shook his head. There was, indeed, several inches of space between the outer primaries, or whatever they were, and the wall.

"That can't be right," he whispered. "I was knocking over things a few hours ago." He had told Redusson that Malfoy was helping him, because she had to know, just the way she had to know that he had flown, but he didn't see the need to tell her that he'd been here, in the bastard's private lab.

"But you weren't trying consciously to control them," Redusson said, and made another quick note. "That's the difference. When you try, they're there according to your body's nervous system and brain, and you can perform tasks with them. When you decide that you want to ignore them, then they get in the way and trail behind you and trip you up."

Harry shook his head stubbornly. Not that he wanted to deny her conclusions about the wings, because they might be the only things that would help him get rid of them, but she sounded as though—"They're not alive. They don't care what I think of them."

Redusson laid her hand along the edge of the wing. It didn't hurt, the way it had when he pulled out feathers, but he didn't feel that intense pleasure he did from Malfoy, either. It was neutral, just a touch. Harry reckoned that was because she wanted to help him, but didn't care about fucking him, the way Malfoy had. "They are alive in the same way any part of the body is," she said quietly. "And I have seen cases like this before. People who came in with tails, for example. They could control them when they thought about them, and eventually that conscious control became unconscious. But when they resented them and ignored them, then they had problems with them, yes."

"So what you're saying," Harry said, after a moment of tense silence in which he thought about it and Redusson watched him, "is that I can either live with these wings as part of my body and control them."

Redusson nodded. There was a faint smile pulling at her lips, as if he had done something that made her proud of him.

"Or I can go through life tripping over them." Harry folded his arms over his knees and leaned forwards. "What about getting rid of them?"

Redusson's smile vanished, and she sighed. "I think it's already too late for that, Auror Potter, to be perfectly honest."

"Really?" Harry didn't want to sound as though he was going to bite off her head—or, perhaps, that _was _the way he wanted to sound. At least it made her eye him with more respect. _She's only trying to help. And she can't lie to you just because you don't want to hear the truth. _"So taking a knife to them wouldn't help?"

Redusson stood up tall and looked him directly in the eye. "Taking a knife to them would create large wounds that would meant you bled out, exactly as if you cut off an arm or leg," she said. "Unless you had someone next to you who was experienced in treating those types of wounds, you would die. I hope that you aren't going to tell me you would prefer to do that rather than live with the wings, Auror Potter. I would have to refuse to help you, and I'd prefer not to do that. There _are _Healers who would help you, but all of them have extremely poor reputations."

Harry realized that he was breathing as though he was about to have a panic attack, and that was probably the reason that Redusson and so many of the mediwizards were looking at him with white faces. He bit his lip and concentrated on his breathing the way he had on his wings, until he thought it was under control and he could continue. "I don't believe this," he whispered. "I can't. I really can't."

"Why not?" Redusson touched his wing again. Again the touch felt neutral, but at least, if Malfoy was telling the truth, Harry thought he could trust her to be honest with him when she was touching him. "I am sorry this happened to you, especially as it distresses you, but if you want another Healer to work on the case—"

"What would happen if I cut them off and _did _have someone there who was experienced in treating that kind of wound?" Harry asked abruptly. "Would that mean that I could survive the experience, and the bloody things would be _gone_?"

Redusson hesitated and blinked. "I don't know," she admitted a moment later. "It isn't something I've thought about."

"Why not?" Harry braced his hands on the table and wondered if he could rise off it. But then his wings bulged around him and ruffled out so that the feathers were pointing at Redusson, and he subsided with a muffled curse. "You know that I want them off. You've thought of the dangers of that procedure. Why not the advantages?"

Redusson paused, then sighed. "I must say that it's refreshing, in a way, to have a patient like this so involved in his treatment," she muttered. "The people with tails sometimes want them gone so badly that they won't speak to a Healer on the topic at all; they want us to come up with a miraculous solution and simply implement it."

Harry didn't think that sounded like an answer to his question, so he waited, eyes on her.

Redusson made a patting, pushing motion at the air. Harry didn't know what to make of it, but she followed it with words a moment later. "The problem, Auror Potter, is that we're usually cutting off pig tails, or donkey ears, or monkey fur. And even then, it's not the preferred method. We use potions to wither them, or Vanishing spells that are precisely tuned to the person involved."

Harry nodded choppily. "Then what's the problem with my wings? You're acting as if I have no choice but to stick with them, but if everyone else has the chance to remove those stupid bloody things a spell may have given them—"

"Because of the particular nature of your wings," Redusson replied quietly.

_Of course. _Harry cast a glance of bitter hatred back at the wings. They started to flutter, but when he thought about it, he didn't want them to, so he snapped them viciously shut on his shoulders. It hurt. He welcomed the pain, because it still meant that they were alien, not so much a part of him, if they could hurt and he didn't know why.

"They are phoenix wings," Redusson said, as if he might have managed not to understand that. "It's possible that they'll—"

"Regenerate," Harry finished. He felt as if he might throw up.

"Yes." Redusson moved closer to him, looking keenly into his face. "Auror Potter, could you help me understand why, exactly, this upsets you so much? The wings are useful to you in that they can keep you warm and enable you to fly. They may be an unchangeable fact of your biology by now, to use the Muggle terms that many of my colleagues are fond of. In all that, why do you seem so upset that they are there?"

"Because I finally had the life that I wanted," Harry said. "Friends and work and everything. Even the last of the Death Eaters was finally going to be captured, once we finished the Rosier case. But now this could cost me my job, and I can't sit down normally, and I always have to think about what clothes I'm going to wear, and I can't conceal them, and everyone will stare at me even more than they already do—"

He clamped his teeth down on his tongue. Otherwise, he might start whimpering, and while he might have been willing to talk to Redusson about the other things brewing in his head, he hadn't decided that he should talk about such things to the mediwizards with her.

What he wanted to say was: _I got used to being the Chosen One. I can handle that kind of fame and pressure now. But now I'm going to be famous for something else, and always stared at and always pointed at, and always the center of attention. It's going to take years for people to accept me like this. Maybe they never will. I want to be normal. That's all I want. I'd finally achieved it, as much as I ever will, and now these wings come along and take it away._

But he couldn't say that. He shook his head, leaped to his feet, and began to dress. He couldn't take more of this right now.

"If you'd give me the name of a Healer who's worked with some of these cases where they _did _cut something off?" he asked tightly, head averted. "Someone you trust. Or someone who brews potions to remove them."

"Auror Potter." Redusson's voice was hesitant. "Are you sure that you're all right? Do you need a Calming Draught?"

"No," Harry said, and then saw a gout of flame curling out of his wing from the corner of his eye. He snatched at it hastily with one hand, and felt his fingers pass through it as if it were no more than a cloud, or they were. But it was real enough to catch the hair of one young mediwizard on fire, and he screamed and clutched at his head, ducking. The others hurried over to him, and Redusson drew her wand as though she assumed that she would need to defend him from Harry.

Harry turned and ran from the room, not bothering to put on his robe. There was nothing exposed that his wings couldn't cover, anyway.

_And I hate using them that way._

He blurred through the corridors of the hospital, past staring faces and gaping mouths and reaching hands, and emerged out the entrance—

Only to find several reporters gathered there. Harry slammed to a stop, and saw the cameras flashing and heard the murmur of excited voices.

"Auror Potter!" shouted someone who sounded like Rita Skeeter, or else her apprentice. "What would you say about the claims that you've become a dangerous monster who needs to be confined for the good of others?"

"Mr. Potter!" Someone hopping up and down in the second row, waving a hand. "Did you really murder Hyperion Rosier? What do you say—"

"What kind of spell changed you?" Someone else scribbling away, not looking up at him for more than a second at a time. "Could you share it with others so that they might receive the same benefits you did?"

It was too much.

Harry spread his wings.

There were more camera flashes, but most people cried out and fell back. It was a natural reaction to a large object unfolding in front of you, as Harry had discovered and used to his advantage in Auror training when he'd tossed a cloak over one of his instructors and beaten him in a duel that way.

He rose from the ground without running, this time. After all, if flame powered his flight, then he shouldn't need the space to gain up the power, the way that a swan had to run across a lake to take off.

More people gaped at him. Harry didn't care. He pulled his wings in and beat hard, scattering wind and fire around him. Then he was up and soaring, high enough that he reeled and wheeled and felt the air grow thin in his lungs. That was all right. His wings warmed it for him.

He was too high to be seen by Muggles, high enough to escape camera flashes, but not high enough to escape the memory of hurting the young mediwizard. Not high enough to escape the wings that had carried him there.

Harry went home.


	9. Flight Into Flight

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine—Flight Into Flight_

By the time that the knock came on the door, Harry was grateful to hear it. He'd had just about enough of lying around on his stomach in bed, wings draped over his body as though they were giant feather dusters, and feeling sorry for himself. He stood up, stretched with a few careful strokes that managed not to knock over any tables, and shuffled towards the door.

He opened it, and Hermione stepped in and nodded to him. His wards didn't react to her, of course. He had fine-tuned them so that they never stopped his friends, although they _would _react to someone who was merely imitating one of his friends with Polyjuice or glamours.

"You realize that your flight is all over the papers and the wireless?" Hermione asked. She took a seat in the kitchen and looked at him expectantly. Harry poured cold tea into a cup and floated it over to her. She could warm it up if she wanted to.

Hermione grinned at him and did. Harry leaned back against the counter—lofting his wings high first—and waited. This was the way they always were when he got himself into some sort of mess and Hermione came over to try to pull or reason him out of it. They would half-battle, and squabble, and smack, and snarl, and agree, until they reached the point where they were comfortable with each other again.

Hermione Summoned the cream and dumped enough into her tea that Harry finally snorted. "The goal isn't to turn it into milk."

She shrugged at him. "Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not bliss for other people," she said, and closed her eyes as she sipped. Then she sighed. "Ahhh."

"Listen to you, acknowledging opposing perspectives and all that," Harry said. "Not something you do much in your line of work." Hermione had made a habit in the past few years of running down people who didn't agree with her. It was the only way to get a lot of legislation past a lot of crusty old wizards, but it could be annoying when she was with her friends.

"Sometimes I do have to do things like that," Hermione said, and her smile flickered on and off like a torch passing over a window. Then she leaned forwards intently. "What did the Healers say about your wings? And Malfoy? Ron seemed to think that he was going to help, somehow."

Harry saw no reason not to tell her everything, so he did. It was possible that Hermione would see a way no one else had.

She didn't seem to. Her frown grew harder and harder as he went on, and she finally put her cup down with a firm clink in the middle of the chair arm. "Shit," she said. "Things like this only happen to you."

Harry nodded. "But there's something I've thought of that might give me hope." He actually hadn't thought of it until he was talking to Hermione, but he wouldn't mention that, because it made him feel stupid for not thinking of it before. "Malfoy is a Potions master, and Redusson did say that some potions have removed unwanted body parts before. What if he could brew something to take them off?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "He might be able to," she allowed. "But would he want to? He seems to like them fine right where they are."

Harry grimaced and rubbed his neck. "Yeah, I know." The feathers brushed against his fingers and sent up stinging little sparks, as if they knew that he planned to cut them off and didn't like it. Harry snatched his hand back, shaking it. "But I figure it's worth a try. This can be a test, in a way. If he really likes me as much as he claims to, then he'll brew the potion, or at least do what he can. If he doesn't, if having me keep the wings matters more to him than anything else, at least I'll know."

"Yes, at least there's that," Hermione echoed, and then sighed. "What are you going to do about the press?"

Harry fluttered his lashes at her. "Why, Hermione. I hoped that you might help me, given your expertise in that area."

"I know how to hold a press conference," Hermione pointed out, leaning back in the chair and sipping the tea again. Harry didn't know how she kept her eyes from crossing at the sweetness. "That doesn't mean that I can stop the publicity from spreading. Your having wings is huge news, Harry. It would be even if they were the decorative kind that fall off in a little while. That you can use them to _fly?_ So far, there's at least five big public opinions." Hermione began to count them off on her fingers. "That this is a Ministry plot to make you a more effective Auror, and they won't admit it. That Voldemort cursed you to have them before he died." Hermione rolled her eyes to show what she thought of _that _one. "That you've had them all along and only now revealed them. That you're a dangerous beast with inherited phoenix magic, which means one of your parents wasn't who they claimed they were, and we need to search through your genetic records. And that you're telling the truth." She laid her hand down in her lap and shook her head. "Flying in front of the cameras wasn't very smart, you know."

Harry sighed. "I know. But I was angry." He tried to stretch his arms and rammed his elbow into the curve of the left wing. He cursed. It didn't hurt, not really, but he hated the subtle ways that the wings restricted his freedom of movement almost more than the obvious ones.

"Can I…"

Harry looked up. Hermione was leaning forwards, almost literally on the edge of her seat, her eyes fastened longingly on the wings.

"Can you what?" Harry asked warily.

"Can I touch them?"

Well, he should have anticipated that the question would come up sooner or later. And Hermione _was _one of his best friends. Harry nodded.

Hermione approached him as though the wings were wild animals that would dart back into the forest at her approach. Well, for all Harry knew, her caution was justified. The wings might at least start to life and drag _him_ off the ground, and one of the things Harry knew that he didn't want to try was flying in his tiny kitchen.

When Hermione reached out as if she would stroke the wings, Harry bit his lip and held still. Hermione seemed to understand his tension; then again, she spent a lot of her time working with magical creatures, so it made sense that she would. She turned her hand so her fingertips would touch the feathers instead of her palm, and then she only let them rest there, instead of caressing the way Malfoy had.

Harry blinked, then smiled. The touch was warm and steady, like Hermione, and although you could argue that it only felt that way because of how she held her arm, Harry didn't think so. He had to accept that Malfoy was right about _some _things, including the honesty the wings enforced, and that was Hermione all over.

"Wow," Hermione said, and then she moved back and gave him the first glance of full-on sympathy he'd got from someone other than Ron. Healer Redusson seemed to grasp how he felt about the wings, but not enough to feel sympathetic if he cut them off. "Yeah, having them around and dangling over your shoulders at all times would _hurt. _I hadn't realized they were so heavy."

Harry shrugged. "It's not the weight so much as the fact that I can't really control them or estimate where they're going to go next," he said. He tried to move his left wing out of the way so that Hermione could go back to her chair, and only succeeded in hitting the kettle with the edge. Harry scrambled for it, and managed to stop it before it spilled. "It's not—they aren't part of me, or they only seem like part of me when I want to fold them or fly with them, or when I really, really concentrate. It's not like I'm suddenly half-bird and have all the instincts that go along with it."

"Even infant birds have to practice before they can fly," Hermione murmured. Her brows were drawn down hard. "They don't just leap out of the nest." She stepped back and sat down again, cocking her head this time as if she wanted to look at the wings' colors from all angles. Obediently, Harry tried to spread them and show her as much as he could, though he winced as the wings scraped against the counter. "What other traits do you have?"

"Healing tears," Harry said, and grimaced. He could have chosen a better way to find out about that, such as any way in the universe. "And fire, apparently. I lit a mediwizard's hair on fire before I left hospital."

Hermione's face lengthened. "That means that people who want to call you a dangerous beast will have someone to talk to."

"Yeah, I know." Harry sighed and told his wings to fold down. They did, although the feathers sparked and hissed as usual, and he honestly wasn't sure that they would stay folded if he tried to move suddenly. "But I didn't do it on purpose, and that's all I can tell anyone who asks. They won't believe me, but they don't anyway."

Hermione gave him a sympathetic smile and reached out to squeeze his hand. "Then I think that's what you should do with the reporters. Give them a single clear story, the way that you did when everyone clamored to know how you defeated Voldemort, and let them fight it out among themselves with the interpretations and the assumptions and the claims that they know something secret you didn't actually tell anyone."

Harry nodded and rubbed his hand over his face. The more he thought about it, the better Hermione's advice sounded. It was the same way he had handled his fame back when that was all he had to worry about. "Thanks, Hermione. This is the first step to living with the wings, I reckon, and treating them like—like they're inconvenient, but not something that can dominate my life."

Hermione squeezed his hand again in response.

* * *

The second knock came that evening, after Hermione had left and Harry had already made himself a simple dinner of a cheese sandwich and a small can of soup. He opened the door, expecting Ron, not satisfied with Hermione's report of how he was doing, or perhaps Mrs. Weasley with a huge basket of food.

Malfoy stood there, looking calmer and smaller than he had that afternoon in the lab. His eyes rested on Harry's face, although Harry thought he also let out a little sigh of relief when he saw the wings. Harry snorted. "Did you think I would find time to cut them off in between the last time I saw you and now?" he asked. "No. They're still here, the precious appendages that you're so fond of." He wriggled them to demonstrate and nearly ended up chipping off part of the door. The knob rattled ferociously, and he hissed as his wing ached.

"No," Malfoy said quietly. "But I heard about the way you left hospital—long after I should have, but I was working on my potions and not trying to monitor the newspapers—and came to see if you were all right."

"Never better," Harry chirped. "I should be used to the newspapers calling me a freak by now, shouldn't I?"

"Will you _stop_?"

Harry blinked and stared. He had been about to go on, but Malfoy had leaned forwards, and his eyes were so passionate that Harry blinked and fell silent.

"You're not a freak," Malfoy said. "I know very well that you haven't changed who you were, completely, because of the wings." He paused, and a mist seemed to steal over his eyes, but then he shook his head and it was gone. "Even though you're much more than I ever thought you were," he murmured, but the next instant he was off and running again, and Harry didn't have the time to ask him what he meant. "I'm attracted to you because of them, but not _only_ because of them. They just gave me the courage to approach you, because I thought you might be more open to trying new things now. I tried to make that clear. I don't think it sank in. You have someone interested in defending you, in giving you the time and the ability to make your own decisions. Do you _want _that? Do you want me to help you?"

"Yes," Harry said, still reeling a bit from the words but glad that the chance to say something had come up so quickly. "Healer Redusson said the same thing you did, that cutting off the wings probably wouldn't work because then I would either bleed to death or they would just come back. But she did say that St. Mungo's sometimes uses potions to remove fur or tails or donkey ears that people have inflicted on themselves. Could you do that? Could you make me a potion that would remove the wings?"

Malfoy's face shut down, and he shifted his weight. Harry was watching his face, and he caught the flash in his eyes.

_He thinks that he can do that. He just doesn't want to. _Harry had seen that look on the face of informant after informant who was trying to weigh the benefits of speaking to the Ministry against the risks of betraying their friends.

"If you can brew it," Harry said, "then I'll pay you, and I'll let you into my house, and I'll let you touch the wings as much as you want to and have as many feathers as you want to. And the wings are yours when they fall off. No more sex, though," he felt compelled to add. "Not unless I ask for it."

Malfoy licked his lips. "And if I think that I can't brew it?"

_Or if I want to persuade you to keep the wings and stay a freak? _Harry knew that the words were hovering behind Malfoy's lips. Perhaps the last one would be slightly different, but every other the same.

Harry glared coolly at him. "Then I shut you out of my life, and find another Potions master who's willing to try. He gets all the same benefits."

Malfoy stared at him. "You would rather trust someone who doesn't have any reason to think the wings are beautiful or functional?"

"Yes," Harry said. "Because I _can't _really trust you, even if you think I can. You've shown that you don't care about what I want, or what I feel. You care about the chance for romancing me, and you outright said that you thought the wings would render me more emotionally vulnerable. That's not something I particularly wanted to hear."

Malfoy reached out, asking permission with a glance sideways. Harry rolled his eyes, but the honesty properties of the wings seemed to work, and he knew that Healer Redusson wasn't the kind of person who would have lied about that to him even if they didn't. He let Malfoy put his hand on the feathers.

The warmth tingled through him, and the pleasure. This time, though, Harry could ignore it and keep his gaze fixed on Malfoy's face. He had things he needed a lot more than he needed whatever kind of shag Malfoy was offering him.

"I touch you so that you can know that I'm honest," Malfoy said. "I didn't want to think about you as emotionally vulnerable, although I'll concede that I should have thought about it, in hindsight. I just thought that, with something new tearing your life wide open, you might be willing to think more about the future than the past."

Harry shook his head. "I want my normal life, without the wings. As normal as I'm ever going to get," he added, because he saw Malfoy's mouth opening and knew his answer would contain some reference to being the Chosen One and a star Auror. "But you keep talking about the wings as beautiful. That's the point. What _you _think of them doesn't matter. What _I _do does. And if you can't get that through your head, then I don't want you helping me."

It took a long, silent moment of struggle beneath the surface of Malfoy's skin, the surface of his eyes. Harry watched a dozen emotions dance there, and never knew from one second to the next which was going to win out. Malfoy's mouth twitched up as if in a snarl; it relaxed as if it would smooth into a smile; he lowered his eyes and lifted them again; he raised a hand and let it fall.

Then, finally, he nodded his head. "I want you to feel as normal as you did," he said. "As normal as you can. If that means getting rid of the wings, then it means getting rid of them. And I can always use phoenix feathers."

Harry relaxed. "Good. Now. What kind of payment do you want?"

They settled on a certain amount of Galleons, and Malfoy even took a creamy scroll of parchment out of the sack slung over his shoulder and wrote down a contract. Harry read it carefully, but couldn't find any sort of horrible, two-sided Malfoy dealing. Of course, that probably only meant he was missing it, so he asked Malfoy to swear it was real with his hand on Harry's wing.

"It's real," Malfoy said, his hand on the right one, his fingers stroking the feathers in a reflex that he apparently couldn't subdue. "More real than everything else in my life."

There was a single emotion in his eyes this time, but Harry forbade himself to read _that_.


	10. Like the Light

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten—Like the Light_

The feather in the middle of the red potion sizzled and sparked. Harry moved backwards cautiously, in case his mere presence caused it to explode. He had had that happen before. He had got no friendlier to potions in the years since Hogwarts, except a few specific ones that he had to know how to brew for Auror work.

(He had passed that requirement in his final training, but barely. It seemed silly to him that they'd had him brew in a "battlefield situation." How often would he have the chance to wait ten minutes for oak leaves to simmer on a battlefield?)

"What does that mean?" he asked, when he glanced up and noticed that Malfoy's expression had changed slightly as he stared at the potion vial. Not enough for Harry to tell or trust what he was really feeling, of course. He thought he would never be able to do that unless Malfoy was touching the wings.

"Um." Malfoy blinked at him for a moment, giving the impression of someone stolen out of the middle of intense concentration. "It means that your feathers don't share another traditional property of the phoenix's." He turned away and picked up a second vial of potion, this one blue, holding a second feather above it. He dropped the feather in, and the sizzling and sparking immediately started again.

"And what's that?" Harry leaned back against the counter, ignoring the gentle fanning efforts that his wings automatically made to keep him upright. He was starting to wonder if he should have insisted on returning to Malfoy's lab after all. Brewing in the middle of his kitchen had _sounded _like a good idea at first, since he wouldn't have to leave the house and show his wings before the planned press conference, but having Malfoy and dozens of corks and ingredients and cauldrons and vials in his space was less comfortable than he had thought it would be.

"Shhh," Malfoy said.

Harry rolled his eyes and looked away, up through his window. He could hear muffled conversation from beyond the wards, since other wards funneled sound at the edges of his property through the windows. The reporters were discussing whether they ought to try and get inside; they knew only the approximate location of his house, and had no ability to see it like this, or him.

Harry smiled grimly. _Try it, idiots._

The sparking and spluttering stopped, and Malfoy moved back from the potion, shaking his head as he stared at it. "Fascinating," he breathed.

"What's fascinating?" Harry looked at the second potion, but as far as he could tell, it had had the same effect as the first one, despite the entirely different color. The feather floated in the middle of it, stirred by small currents of bubbles that seemed to spring naturally from the bottom of the vial. It looked like a burned-out cinder, without the twitching life that irritated Harry so much when they were on the wings.

"It doesn't react at all like phoenix feathers to potions that are meant to simulate fire." Malfoy took a step back, considering both vials with a distant look on his face. He looked halfway handsome doing that, calm and competent and in his element. Harry bit his lips so that he wouldn't say something ridiculous and longing and nodded as if he knew exactly what Malfoy was talking about. "Various elements of a fire, I should say, including smoke and overheated air. Phoenix feathers would have responded by growing brighter and reaching out to their natural element. These simply burned." He turned the same look on Harry, and suddenly Harry enjoyed it less. "Does that mean that they're _ordinary _feathers? Or that something about their natural magic doesn't protect them from potions, but would in a situation where the fire is actually burning? Or would they do better on the wing?"

"I'm not lightning myself on fire for science," Harry said flatly.

Malfoy blinked and seemed to return to the more responsive prat Harry had got to know in the past few days. He nodded. "Of course. My apologies." He waited a moment, and then added, "You haven't experienced any unusual cravings in the last few days? Hunger for strange foods? The desire to increase your warmth?"

Harry snorted. "Not unless you count my apparent desire to sleep with a blond ferret."

Malfoy stood stolidly in place, staring at him, until Harry flicked the wings and folded them to his back. "Sorry," he muttered.

"Would you let me do one experiment?" Malfoy asked quietly. Harry had no idea whether his voice was quiet in reference to what had just happened between them, or whether he was trying not to frighten Harry off. It seemed like the latter, especially when the next thing he added was, "This won't take long, and I'll do my best not to hurt you."

"Uh," Harry said, and tried to move away. But the counter was already at his back, and he accepted with a grimace that he didn't want to look like a coward in front of Malfoy anyway. He straightened up and fixed him with a grim glance. "Fine. What did you want to do?"

"This," Malfoy said, and whispered a long charm that curled up at the end in what almost sounded like a verbal question mark. Harry didn't recognize the words no matter how hard he listened, and he had got pretty good at identifying Latin. He wondered if St. Mungo's knew that Malfoy was using another language for his spells.

Not that it mattered. The hospital was the one place Malfoy had been able to find decent, honest work, for all that he was a good Potions master. Harry wouldn't tell them anything that might ruin that chance for Malfoy. There was petty vengeance like the ferret insult, and then there was this.

The spell seemed to buzz around Harry like a cloud of warm, invisible bees. He _felt _the warmth, felt it probe into his chest and down, deeper. Harry twisted, because the sensation was coming to feel like the moments when Rosier had first cast the spell that warped him, and he didn't want to feel that again—

"Hush." He glanced up to see Malfoy standing with his hand on the right wing, his eyes fixed on the air above Harry's chest. "I promise, this isn't going to hurt."

_That's not what you implied a moment ago,_ Harry thought, but the air wouldn't work right in his lungs to form words when he tried to open his mouth and complain. He coughed instead, and something dark and flaring flew out of his throat and into Malfoy's hands. He cupped his fingers tenderly around it and took it back to a cauldron that Harry had thought was empty, dropping it in.

Harry forced his mouth to work, but it was difficult. He finally snorted a load of air out through his nose and demanded, "Did you just drop my _heart _in that potion?"

Malfoy stared at him with some disdain. "Of course not," he said, and turned back so that he could stir something into the potion. Thick foam appeared above the side of the cauldron, and Harry stared at it, but it remained white, not the red that he would have expected. "If I had, you wouldn't be alive."

Harry clapped his hand over his chest, and yes, his heart was laboring there still. He shook his head, recovered his mental balance, and then snapped, "Well, what the hell was that, then?"

"Shhh."

Harry slumped back against the counter again and stared at the ceiling. He wondered how many other Potions masters Malfoy worked with, and whether any of them had ever felt this intense impulse to murder him.

Malfoy labored over the cauldron for another ten minutes, tossing in flakes of mysterious powders that he'd brought with him, muttering to himself and shaking his head whenever Harry glanced at him. Finally, he stepped back from the cauldron and reached into it with both hands. Harry stared at him with his mouth open, stunned at his hypocrisy. The first thing Malfoy had told him when he turned Harry's kitchen into a potions lab was never to reach in with bare hands, that he should always use a vial.

Harry didn't get the chance to mention the hypocrisy, though. Malfoy turned around and showed him something wondrous in the middle of his clasped hands.

When he came closer, Harry thought it looked like a crystal helix with two loops of color running through it, rather like the genetic model of DNA that Hermione had showed him pictures of once. One loop was red, the other gold. They told Harry nothing, of course, just like the charts of notes and numbers in hospital, but they were pretty. He raised an eyebrow at Malfoy, silently demanding an explanation.

"This is the image of what your magical core looks like right now," Malfoy said, and turned the helix around. "The spell I used was a seeking spell, which dived deep and brought up this image."

Harry felt his mouth fall open. "I never heard of something like that," he said at last. "Why did it hurt so much?"

"You aren't whimpering or bleeding, stop complaining," Malfoy said absently, staring back into the helix. "Anyway. Of course it hurt a little. It was pulling the image directly from your magical core, and that's not meant to interact with ordinary spells most of the time. But I had to see how deeply embedded the phoenix magic was in you. If the spell had simply imprinted a pair of oversized phoenix wings on you, then we should see the feathers interacting with the potions I've used like normal phoenix feathers. But they aren't."

"All right," Harry said, and tried to ignore the eerie feeling that was creeping up and down his spine, brushing him with cold fingers. He was sure that he wouldn't like whatever news Malfoy gave, but that was his business, wasn't it? He was the one who had wanted Malfoy to help him. "But what is the answer? What do those two colors that are mixed into my core mean?"

Malfoy looked at him, and his eyes were less clear than the helix, with specks of blue and grey that Harry had never noticed before. There was something else there, too. Harry leaned forwards and stared.

Then he pulled back and slammed his hand into the counter, because otherwise he was going to hit Malfoy. "Don't you _dare _pity me," he snarled at him. "Don't. You. Dare."

"This is never coming out of you," Malfoy said quietly. "I should have realized it before. The wings aren't attached to your body in any ordinary way, and there's no reason for you to have only a few phoenix traits—the wings, the tears, the fire—and not others, such as the ability to immolate in fire. As I learned when I tested the feathers, they can't regenerate all at once. They can renew themselves, so that you'll never lose the wings, but you won't go up in a ball of fire and stop aging."

"Get to the bloody point, Malfoy." Harry tried to shift and straighten up again. He hated that his voice sounded so dead.

"What happened," Malfoy said, "is what I only half-suspected when I told you that you have some traits of a phoenix, most notably the fact that you returned from beyond death. The magic entered your core, a blast of fire with just a _touch _of phoenix magic—it's a very old spell, but no longer based purely on the power that we took from the phoenixes—and mingled with your power. You're strong enough that your core kept you from dying, but it couldn't keep you from changing. Instead, you acquired those phoenix traits that match closest to traits already in your character."

"I never wished for _more _attention," Harry snapped, and flailed the wings at him.

"I know." Malfoy didn't move away from the wings, but he kept his eyes fixed on Harry's face instead of them, which was unusual. "You have the wings because you like to fly, I would imagine. You have the healing tears because you like to help others. You have the fire because of your temper and because you have a lot of need for defensive magic, in the job you work." He took a deep breath. "You're not a part-phoenix. Not really. Nor are you someone with wings on his back. The tears and the fire hinted that it had gone deeper than that. You're someone who was enough like a phoenix to make a transformation when that spell hit, and acquire just the phoenix gifts that would most help you, and channel the power of the spell into creating them, rather than generating a fire that would burn you to death. But you don't wish to be immortal, you're not afraid of death, so you don't have that. I'm sure there are other things that you're missing, but I don't know what they are right now." He took another deep breath. "You can't get rid of the wings without also excising your magical core. Which would kill you."

Harry could have absorbed that. He could have got through that and done something about it in a calmer mood. He _could _have. He was sure of that.

But—

The pity in Malfoy's eyes.

It stung and flayed him as even the interest Malfoy had shown in the wings had not. That was at least excusable, wasn't it? People showed interest in Harry for all sorts of things that he didn't appreciate all the time. He had learned to live with it when it came to Voldemort and the part he'd played in the war, because, yeah, that was never going away. So he granted interviews and press conferences when he had to, tried to keep the attention mostly on his present Auror work as much as possible, and protected his privacy most fiercely where it counted, at home. People could stare at him, as long as they did it in public and he could retreat when it got to be too much.

But these wings followed him home. The changes in his magical core followed him home. He was never going to be the same.

He couldn't live normally. He never would be normal. He could have accepted that, but not his inability to escape. He had felt the same way about the Horcrux when he realized it was inside him and he had to carve it out. His walk into the Forbidden Forest had been, in part, desperation to have it gone.

But this time, he was older. He had more to live for.

He just hated the way he would have to live right now, and that meant he needed time alone, and that meant he needed time away from the pity in Malfoy's eyes.

"Get out," he said, and his wings came up in a surging wall that barred Malfoy from a sight of his face.

"Harry," Malfoy said. Harry heard him set something down with a clink, probably the crystal sculpture, and move a step forwards. "I don't think you should be alone right now. You need time to adapt—"

"Yes, fine, you've done what you said you would do, you found it out," Harry interrupted in a clipped voice. "It's fine. Go _away_."

"Harry—"

Harry lashed out with his right wing, for the first time trying consciously to hit something with it rather than avoid hitting it. He felt the gathering power in the arc of motion, but still had no idea how strong it would actually be until he heard a splintering smash and a curse break from Malfoy's mouth.

He lifted his wing and stared. Malfoy was in the middle of the remains of the kitchen table, the crystal helix shattered next to him. Bits of the solidified image had cut into his chest, and lazy trails of blood fell down it. A mad giggle broke from Harry's lips before he could stop himself. _How would he tell someone that he cut himself on my magical core? _

But the laughter died when he met Malfoy's eyes. He turned away from what he saw in them, and walked towards the back of the house, shutting doors behind him as he went.

He heard Malfoy picking up splinters, cleaning up after him, picking up cauldrons. He wanted to call out an apology, wanted to make Malfoy stay.

But his voice was stuck in his throat, just like the wings were stuck on his back, just like the magic was stuck in his core, until the moment he heard the door slam behind Malfoy.

_I don't know what to do._


	11. Dealing with the Fire

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—Dealing with the Fire_

"Ready?" Hermione whispered, squeezing his hand.

Harry squeezed back and nodded. Hermione tossed him a bright smile, or as bright as her smiles ever got under circumstances like these, and then pushed away the curtain that shielded the back of the platform from the front and stepped out. Harry heard the roar of voices that rose to greet her, and grimaced.

Well. He would just have to put up with it. When he had told his story, the official story of the wings, and endured some questions, then at least the Ministry couldn't accuse him of concealing it, and could use the official story as a shield if the press turned its attention to them. That would be the beginning of living with this.

With the wings, that were part of him and could follow him anywhere and which were still awkward to sit with and stand with and sleep with and walk with. Harry thought he only truly _used _them when he was flying.

That was a way of life if he was a bird. Not a human being.

Harry squeezed his hands on air in random patterns, staring into the middle distance. He'd told Hermione what Malfoy had discovered, and she had caught her breath and nodded. "Yes, that makes sense," she said when she could speak. "A change in the magical core _would _be needed to create changes this deep in the body—and to allow you to fly…yes…" She'd looked as gloomy as Harry had.

So she thought Malfoy was right. That meant Harry had no choice but to stick with the bloody things.

And without the help of the one Potions master that he might have trusted to resolve the problem, too.

Harry scowled at himself in the next instant. Of course that wasn't true. There were plenty of other Potions masters who'd be willing to help him, especially for phoenix feathers as ingredients, and they would be more trustworthy than Malfoy, not less, since they wouldn't have an investment in him retaining the wings.

Except…

Except that Harry had trusted the gentleness Malfoy showed when he touched his wings, the honest words he spoke then, not because he thought Malfoy shared his opinion about the wings and wanted them gone, too, but because it was gentleness and honesty. He had been gloomily certain even before he spoke to Hermione that Malfoy was probably right. Malfoy had seemed interested in him as a person.

_That's a delusion, and you know it. He even admitted it. Admiring you from afar and then getting up the courage to make a move when you became stupidly strange aren't signs of real interest._

The right wing cocked forwards when Hermione opened the curtain and beckoned him. Harry pushed it back again and stepped through the gap in the cloth, but of course his wings spread wider in that defensive movement they appeared to have memorized and impeded him. He had to flap twice so the shake the curtain off them, so he was floating a bit above the ground when he came onto the stage.

The shouts and demands fell silent when people saw him, and Harry felt hundreds of greedy eyes drinking him up. He winced. At least the scar was so small that most people had to stare in its general direction, rather than at it, from a distance. His wings spread out and fanned slowly up and down as if glorying in the attention.

"What happened?" someone started, a dark-haired man in the front row whom Harry didn't recognize, and after that it was an avalanche of questions. Hermione had to cast a firework spell, enhanced by a blue flame curling up from one of the wings, before Harry could get the silence he needed to answer their questions.

He told the story as simply as possible, with plenty of names—Hyperion Rosier's and the names of the Aurors who had been with him—so that no one could decide that he was trying to hide someone or start referring to "nameless and resurgent Death Eaters." He gave the name of the Healer he'd been working with and admitted that he'd singed a mediwizard with his flames. That started out a chorus of gasps and then an even more eager baying of the hounds.

"Are you saying, Auror Potter," demanded one woman, leaning so far forwards that Harry thought she would sprawl on her face at the base of the platform, "that you're dangerous to other wizards?"

"Only as long as I don't have the wings under control," Harry said, and flashed the charming smile that he'd learned to use when people wanted him to answer very personal questions about his parents. "But I'm learning to use them, and I already have them mostly obeying me now. It takes a lot of control to fly away from people like I did from you, don't you think? And I didn't burn _one _reporter there!"

That got a bit of a laugh, and after that some questions in a friendlier tone. Harry answered as many questions honestly as he could—transparency bored them sooner than anything else—and most of the ones he didn't want to, he wasn't sure of the answers anyway, such as whether the Ministry planned to use him in reconnaissance missions. Soon some people wandered away from the fringes of the crowd. They were in an alley off Diagon Alley, close to the publishing offices of many of the newspapers, and this was the perfect way to get the story slung to the public first.

"And what about detaching the wings?" asked Julianna Yeats, a hard woman who worked for the _Quibbler _and the _Prophet _on an insane, alternating schedule Harry could never keep up with. "Can you chop them off and donate them to St. Mungo's, as some sources indicate you wanted to do at first?"

Harry bared his teeth. He had hoped this question wouldn't be asked, and in fact, some of the reporters were frowning at Yeats, though that might only be envy of her sources. Still, he answered. "I would have liked to do that, and no doubt, the wings would have benefited magical medicine. But it turns out that the wings are wound into my magical core, as I mentioned. I can donate individual feathers, but not the whole wing."

"And who discovered this?" Yeats was scribbling away, her head bowed over her pad. "I've talked to some of the mediwizards who treated you, and I didn't hear a whisper of this from them."

"Potions masters working for St. Mungo's discovered it for me," Harry said. "I would have liked to resist the knowledge, believe me." He flashed that charming smile again, and some of the younger women behind Yeats sighed.

Yeats wasn't as susceptible to that, probably because she'd reported on a few of Harry's affairs with men. She just shook her head, smirking. "A good try, Auror Potter, but I want names."

"Why?" Harry asked, staring at her with a blank face. "I had the impression that you were a good reporter. Are you really _that _incompetent, that you can't discover which Potions masters work for St. Mungo's?"

Some laughter; not as many people liked Yeats as Harry had seen like Rita Skeeter, if these reactions hinted at the truth. Yeats flushed. "It's a matter of integrity, Potter," she said haughtily. "You certainly haven't been short on names so far, and though I could discover them myself, someone might indeed wonder why you're hiding these particular people."

_Shit. Of course someone would notice that. _But Harry couldn't show signs of a reaction, because that would make them pursue the scent. He sighed and rolled his eyes. "It was a team effort," he said slowly. "And as you've reported yourself in the past, I believe, I know _nothing _about potions. If someone told me that a particular experiment was performed in the left-hand lab in the first right corridor at nine-o'clock in the morning in the first stage of the moon, well, I wouldn't know whose that was and I wouldn't know what it meant. I didn't pay attention to the process of getting there, just to the conclusions."

That relaxed them, although it frustrated Yeats, and there were a few more questions. Finally, Hermione stood up and gracefully called the press conference to a close, and the reporters turned their attention to her. Harry ducked back behind the curtain, shaking his head. The shirt that he was holding onto his chest with Sticking Charms was getting more and more uncomfortable. He _had _to figure out a better solution before he could go back to the daily round of his job. Fletcher had said so.

He was staring down at the shirt, waving his wand in idle patterns as he considered how to alter it, when Hermione ducked behind the curtain and demanded, "Why didn't you want to name Malfoy?"

"Not you, too," Harry told her with a groan, and sank down in the stool he'd had set up earlier. He waved his wand in earnest this time, and a glass of cool lemonade flew to him. He listened to the ice clink as he leaned back and sipped it. "I swear, there are times I think you missed your calling, Hermione, and there's some vacant office out there with an editor dreaming of his star, bushy-haired reporter."

"I still want to know." Hermione plopped down in the chair next to him and scowled at him. "He did a lot of work for you. I think depriving him of the credit is going to anger him, and in this case, I can't blame the anger."

Harry stared at her, then snorted. "And you think that he would still want to be associated with me after what I did to him?"

Hermione hesitated. "I'm sure he understands it was an accident."

Harry shook his head. "He didn't, not from the expression on his face. And I wasn't in the right state of mind to apologize then."

"Are you ever?"

Harry rolled his eyes at her and continued. "The point _is, _naming him in relation to me doesn't give him any choice. The reporters would go and hound him, and at this point, he probably wants to forget about me and regrets that he ever helped me. This way, he can speak up if he wants, but otherwise he's well rid of someone who was ungrateful for his help and who he probably doesn't ever want to see again." He drank the rest of the lemonade with a long sigh and shut his eyes.

"Are you sorry?" Hermione asked quietly. "That you were ungrateful, I mean?"

Harry nodded, not looking at her. He didn't feel like it. He was still learning how to balance on a stool, with his muscles constantly tensed because there was no chair back to lean against. He wondered if he would ever be able to relax while he was sitting down again. "I am. He did a lot for me, and I repaid him with violence. But the fact remains that I still don't really know why he approached me in the first place, and he—he was _sorry _for me, Hermione, when he said the wings wouldn't ever go away. Not the way that you're sorry for someone who's facing a hard fate. The way you're sorry for a child who isn't going to get the sweets they want. I've seen that before, in people's faces, when they just look at me and see a little lost boy. He still doesn't understand that the wings are a huge inconvenience for me. He thinks they're wonderful, and so I should think so, too. According to him."

"Oh." Hermione was silent for a moment, then said, "I didn't realize that you could read him so well."

Harry shrugged wearily. "He told me some of that himself, and after that it wasn't such a stretch to realize what he felt based on the emotion in his eyes."

"And you couldn't have misjudged him?" Hermione asked gently. "The pity couldn't have been the kind that you'd accept, but you _mistook _it for the other kind because you wanted an excuse to shove him out of your life?"

Harry glared at her from the corner of one eye. "I _said _I was sorry for pushing him into the table. That doesn't mean I wanted him gone as soon as possible, _or _that I wanted to give him an excuse to hang around. What are you implying?"

"That you should give the apology to him yourself," Hermione retorted, and stood up. "You could fly to St. Mungo's, or else he has a small flat less than a kilometer from here. And you could Apparate or fly there in a few seconds."

Harry grunted, and said nothing. But he sat there thinking about it for a long time after Hermione had gone to chase the last few lingering reporters away.

And in the end, he decided to go to Malfoy's flat. Not because he hoped he would be there, or because he was tormenting himself with unfulfilled longings about Malfoy, the way Hermione seemed to suggest he was. Purely and simply because Malfoy deserved the apology, and Harry thought he should give it face-to-face.

* * *

Harry grimaced and tried to keep his wings folded behind him as he leaned in to pull the small bell attached to the door. He had found the flat easily enough, on the second floor of a tall, slender building humming with wards, because of the _MALFOY_ carved on the window glass in what looked like diamond-sharp letters. But there was no handle, and the wards increased when he moved his hand closer to the door, so he didn't want to knock. It was pull the bell and see what happened.

He saw the shadow of movement behind a window, and tried not to hope. He shouldn't be hoping, anyway. It wasn't _that _late in the afternoon, Malfoy was probably still at work and busy—

The door opened. Malfoy stared at him with a face gone so still that Harry winced even before he began the apology. He doubted Malfoy would accept it.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry," he began. "For pushing you into the table and, uh, shattering the crystal thing on you." He tried subtly to see if Malfoy was carrying bandages across cuts beneath his shirt, but then again, Malfoy was a Potions master. He'd probably taken a healing potion as soon as he got home. "You had to give me bad news, but it wasn't your fault. I should have taken it better."

There was silence freezing enough that Harry was grateful for the warm presence of the wings at his back. Then Malfoy said in a low voice, "And that's really all that you've come to say?"

"Uh," Harry said intelligently.

"What about an apology for keeping my name out of your press conference?" Malfoy moved a single smooth, graceful step forwards, looking like a stalking leopard. "What about an apology for convincing everyone that other Potions masters helped me, instead of revealing _I _was the one who did everything? Or are you too _good _to name a former Slytherin that way?" His mouth was twitching with rage.

"I tried to _protect _you!" Harry snapped, and his wings flared out around him. _Trust Malfoy to misinterpret me trying to be considerate. _"I wanted you to have the opportunity to disassociate yourself from me, since I didn't think you'd ever want to see me again and even this apology was going to fail—"

"So you only came to me because you thought it would succeed?" Malfoy was slinking forwards, and Harry had to shake away the impression that he was doing it exactly the way that a cat would stalk a bird. "Will you be angry at me if I refuse and send you away, or will you acknowledge that I have the right to do _that _much, at least?" His hands flashed out and caught Harry's wrists, dragging him closer.

Harry kept his wings folded, because he didn't want to hit Malfoy again and he probably would right now if he lashed out. He tried to hold his breath, in fact, and act as calm as possible. This was—this wasn't the way he'd thought it would go. Malfoy would accept the apology and shut the door in his face, or grandly order him off. But not this _dragging, _so close Harry could smell the scent drifting off him.

"I thought you _would _send me away," he said. "I've hurt you and ignored your advice and distrusted you. There's no reason, through all that, for you to give me another chance."

Malfoy stopped moving. Because Harry wasn't sure what he had said to encourage that reaction, he remained still, one cautious eye on Malfoy.

"You're right," Malfoy said, though his voice was as low as if he was talking to someone else. "Why would I give you another chance? Except for the reasons that you don't have a reason to know because I never told you about them, and so you don't stand a chance of figuring them out on your own."

"I'm not _that _stupid!" Harry tried to protest.

Malfoy merely gave him a dark smile and shook his head. "I've made my decision," he said. "Coming to apologize means something, but _I _get to be the one to decide what I want it to mean."

"Er, all right," Harry said slowly, when Malfoy was watching him with an evil glint in his eye.

Malfoy's grip tightened. "Come on, then," he said, and pulled, leaving Harry with little choice but to follow him inside.

And try his best not to feel like the fly following the spider.


	12. In Pursuit of an Ideal

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twelve—In Pursuit of an Ideal_

Malfoy's flat was more comfortable than Harry had thought it would be, insofar as he wasted any thought on the subject at all. He had assumed he would find stiff furniture and all kinds of art that would make him feel inferior because he didn't know anything about it and china that was for special show.

But, instead, he found a huge fireplace that was the size of the one in the Gryffindor common room, blazing out cheerful heat on the circle of chairs in front of it. There were other doors to other rooms, but Harry was taken by the fire and the colors in this one. He looked at the landscapes on the walls, all jewel-toned seas and forests and deserts, and wondered if part of the reason Malfoy liked his wings was purely and simply their colors.

Which would be…disconcerting. But then, Harry had already admitted to himself that he didn't really understand the way that Malfoy talked to him about his wings.

He stood in front of one of the chairs, because they were all high-backed and sitting down in them would be impossible with his wings, and stared hard at Malfoy. Malfoy had sat, and was staring so dreamily into the flames that he seemed to have forgotten he had an audience who might be impatient. Then again, if Malfoy had ever thought about his audience's needs in any special way, it was news to Harry.

"Well?" he prodded at last, when he thought Malfoy might keep staring into the flames like that forever.

Malfoy started and looked up at him, and then suddenly flowed to his feet. Harry didn't flinch, because if Malfoy came towards him with his wand drawn, then Harry would just lash out with his wings and knock the mantelpiece down. It had framed photographs behind glass on it, and a delicate little golden plate of the kind that Harry had thought would fill the entire place. Malfoy wouldn't want them broken.

"I was thinking about how to begin," Malfoy said. "What I'm about to say won't make much sense to you, because your ideals are—ideals. Abstractions. Not people."

Harry stared at him. Then he said, "Don't talk about shit you don't understand. I idolized Dumbledore." _Not anymore, not exactly, but…_ It was hard to sort out what he felt for Dumbledore, even years later, and Harry didn't intend to try. "I idolized my godfather." He had to swallow and look away for a moment.

From the impatience in Malfoy's voice, he didn't notice. "I'm talking about an ideal. Not idolization."

Harry frowned and looked back at him. "One leads to the other."

"Not always." Malfoy leaned an elbow on the mantelpiece, which disappointed Harry—it meant the mantelpiece wasn't as fragile as he'd assumed—and studied him intently. "There are ways you could say that I've found my ideal in you. You stand at the confluence of many things I admire and would like to be myself. But I _also _don't think you could say that I idolize you."

"Of course you don't," Harry said, glad that they were back on ground he could understand. He spread the wings and fluffed them up and down. Malfoy sneezed a bit as feather dust flew around, and Harry grinned at him. "You idolize _these_. You still never would have given a fuck about me if I didn't have them."

"Not true." Malfoy took a step towards him. "That's what I keep trying to _tell _you. I didn't know what I thought about you, not really. This…has revealed a lot to me, as well as to you. I've had to go back and rethink some of the decisions I made over the years, to see if I was thinking about you when I made them. And I found that I was." He huffed and shook his head. "You think this is disturbing for _you_. You have no idea what it's like for me."

"If you don't _tell _me, no," Harry pointed out. He didn't know why so many people found that simple lesson so hard to understand.

"I found out that you've affected me far more than you should have, if you were just a schoolboy rival and someone on the opposite side of the war that I could forget about," Malfoy said, and frowned harder. "Someone like Weasley? I only thought about him if I saw his name in the papers or someone else mentioned him. But you. You were the first person who refused to be my friend for a reason that didn't have to do with, oh, my parents hating yours. You were my rival in Quidditch, and you stayed in school despite all the things I did to try and hurt you, and you saved me, like I told you before, without thinking about who you were saving or doing it for some kind of political gain. I always thought the world worked a certain way. You were outside those expectations."

"I thought you were long past the point of blood prejudice," Harry said, feeling a small stab of disappointment go in home under his ribs. Once or twice he had become friends with pure-bloods who treated him like some kind of exotic pet because he could hold his own in conversations with them. He hadn't thought Malfoy was like that, but what he was talking about certainly destroyed that perception.

Malfoy gave him another freezing glance, and then began pacing back and forth. "Still not what I'm saying," he muttered. "What I'm saying is that you challenged me, and you made me think, and you made me develop in directions that I never would have otherwise. After the war, I almost gave up. It seemed to me that if I couldn't have the kind of life my parents had once promised I would have, it was better to have none at all."

Harry rolled his eyes. "The next thing you're going to tell me is that I'm your _inspiration_." He made his voice as breathy as he could.

Malfoy whirled around and came in close, bearing Harry down even with the warning way that the wings arched above his head. "Will you be still?" he hissed. "I'm trying to tell you the way it is, and you continue to _mock _me."

"Say something reasonable, and then I'll stop mocking you." Harry folded his arms and stared at the bastard.

Malfoy muttered something under his breath, something that sounded like, "I'm _trying_," and then turned away and continued walking up and down, half-sighing to himself, half-grumbling. Harry watched him, and was reminded of the time that he'd spent half forever trying to come up with a way to tell Ron and Hermione that he liked blokes as well as birds. In the end, it hadn't been that important to them, or only because it was important to him, but he had felt the words twisting around in his throat like a fishhook, and he hadn't been sure that anyone else would understand them.

Maybe that was what was happening here. _Maybe_. He smoothed a few of the feathers, but retained their sharp edges in case Malfoy tried something else.

"All right," Malfoy said. "It's like this. I could have given up after the war. I looked at the articles about you, the way you entered Auror training right after you took the NEWTS, and I knew I couldn't."

Harry shook his head despite himself. "So I'm your ideal who you want to spite. I still don't really understand that, but okay."

Malfoy shot him another intense look. "You did it," he said. "So I was going to do it. It wasn't to spite you. As far as I knew, you'd never give me a second glance. But I had something to prove to _myself_. Do you see that? You became a metric for me. No, I don't know why. I don't know why it was so important for me to compete with you, to challenge you, when I didn't say anything about it to you and you'd never be in the same field with me again. But it does mean that I owed you something, something strange.

"Then you showed up with the wings. We were back in contract, and I had the chance to prove myself to you in—other ways. Not as a rival, this time. As someone who could help you, maybe, since I could work on a potion for the wings. I was willing to do that before you asked," he added. "You didn't have to bribe me."

"And you could have said so," Harry said, holding back the wings when they wanted to rise in front of him. The problem with defensive, shielding gestures, he was learning, was that they _told _Malfoy he was defensive. "Not accepted the Galleons and the contract and made it seem that working on a potion to get rid of the wings was the last thing you wanted to do."

Malfoy bared his teeth. "I _didn't _want to get rid of them. Because I thought I could show you that I found them beautiful, when other people would stare at you and giggle or gawk or snap pictures. I find them beautiful. I want to sleep with you. That was the way they would matter to me. But I wanted to matter to _you_. If I showed you that I could be a good lover, a creative lover, that was another way to live up to me, to live up to you, and to answer the challenge your very _existence _sends me."

Harry put his hand over his eyes and shook his head. The wings rose and fell, this time, and when he looked up, it was to see Malfoy watching them, some complicated mixture of anger and yearning and lust in his eyes.

"You're fucked-up," Harry told him. "I shouldn't matter that much to you, not when we've led separate lives for so long."

Malfoy's eyes flickered to him, and a lizard-like smile, darting and bright, came and went on his face. "You were expecting me _not _to be fucked-up after a bloody war, Potter?" he asked. "You've completely recovered and you're normal and there's nothing in your life that ever reminds you of it? How wonderful you are. How different, in the way that you seem to deny you want to be."

Harry thought of the anger running through him when he chased Rosier, the way that killing or capturing the last Death Eater would feel like finally putting the war behind him. He had chased the other Death Eaters much the same way, full of anger that they still _existed_, and when he heard about some of them, like the Lestrange brothers, dying in prison the anger had become a soothing coolness and he'd spent the evening celebrating.

He shook his head. "I don't go around wanting people to keep stupid wings because of it," he said.

"I've told you the truth," Malfoy said. "You can think it's fucked-up and inadequate and horrible all you like. No, I'm not in love with you. Nor do I just want to sleep with someone who has wings. Your friend Weasley with the same wings would do nothing for me. Nor would any of the other Potions masters I work with—and several of them are my friends. It's you, Potter, this particular combination, these particular circumstances, that makes me want you." This time, his smile was more like a shark, surfacing suddenly in the middle of what Harry had thought was a normal conversation. "It's always been you."

Harry hissed at him, and hated the shrill edge to it. Had he always sounded like that, so—bird-like? He didn't think he had, but he didn't want to stop and think about it right now. "I don't feel the same way about you."

Malfoy snorted. "And you don't think I realized that long ago? You would have come more often to hospital or not worked to save me if you did. What I can do is try to matter to you. Not always in the same way. But to be important." He gave Harry a leisurely look that spent as much time on his body as on the wings. "I'd say that I'm important enough for you to give me wounds on the chest twice in my life, at least. There can't be many other people who can claim they're Harry Potter's favorite victim."

Harry beat his wings in agitation, and the fire bowed, then stretched out to him as if it wanted to embrace his feathers. Harry turned sharply away. The last thing he needed now was more strangeness, and one that he couldn't even predict based on his resemblance to a phoenix. He didn't think ordinary phoenixes affected ordinary fires. "You're not that," he said. "You're nothing to me."

"So much nothing that you came and apologized to me."

"I apologized for _hurting you_," Harry said, wondering when the self-centered git would realize that. "That's different from apologizing to you because I like you, or because you matter to me, or because I really want to keep the wings. I'm going to confirm the news you gave me with someone else, and if it's true—" He had to pause and lick his lips. He hated thinking about what his life would be like if it was true. "If it is," he finished, as firmly as he could when he wanted to scream, "then I'll learn glamours to cover the wings up. And if it isn't, then I won't feel like I ever need to see you again."

Malfoy moved forwards and gripped his wrist. Harry didn't deign to look at him. From what Malfoy had told him, he thought that kind of ignoring would drive him mad more quickly than anything else.

"I want to know if you would accept help on a different kind of potion," Malfoy breathed. "You didn't give me the chance to say this the other day, because you didn't give me the chance to say _anything_ the other day—"

Harry almost turned to look at him, and then reminded himself that he was ignoring Malfoy. He kept his head turned to the side.

"But what about a potion that would enable the wings to retract?" Malfoy's hand traced up the side of his shoulder and settled along his skin there, fingers stroking. "They aren't attached to you in any normal way, and they haven't replaced your arms. There are these _pouches _on your back, where they begin. I thought at first that was an effect of the magic that changed you, but now I think it simply happened because the place where the wings begin is fragile and needs to be sheltered from the wind and the flame and the power when you fly. What if I came up with a potion that could enable the wings to retract into those pouches?"

Harry shifted his balance and tried not to look as if he was listening. But Malfoy must have seen signs of it in his face, because he paused for a single, breathless moment before pressing confidently forwards.

"You aren't answering me. You must be thinking about it. I won't be denied this much, Potter. I won't be denied _some _acknowledgment."

"Why not?" Harry snapped, swinging around to face him. "You've told me the truth now, but I could as easily think that was pathetic. I could tell you to go away and get yourself a life that doesn't focus on me."

Malfoy shrugged with one shoulder. He didn't seem inclined to remove his hand from Harry's wrist in the way that shrugging with both shoulders might have required him to do. "I've told you the truth. And you haven't told me to do that so far. You haven't really reacted to my suggestion, in fact. What do you say?"

Harry licked his lips. If Malfoy was telling him the truth, then this might be the best solution he would find. And he could trust Malfoy to offer it in a way that he didn't trust him to brew a potion that would remove the wings. After all, Malfoy wanted the wings to stay. Hiding them was different from taking them away.

_If what Malfoy said is true. _

He had practically accepted it, or thought he had, when he was talking to Hermione that morning. But he found himself shaking his head now, moving back. "I need time to think about this," he said. "I need to seek out another Potions master who doesn't have any interest in this and can tell me whether what you're saying is true."

Malfoy gave him a smile like a razor. "Good luck finding someone like that. The Potions masters you know will all have _some _investment in you. If only the investment of wanting the fame that will come from treating the famous Harry Potter."

Harry curled his lip at him. "Which you'll have when I tell the press it was you."

"It's more than that, with me," Malfoy said. "Believe me or don't. I have no other words to offer you."

Harry snorted and stood there a little longer, thinking about it. The retraction potion might not work, but it still sounded like the best chance he would get. And going to someone else first would help his pride, even if it dented Malfoy's.

"Fine," he said. "If everything you told me turns out to be true, and there is no way to get rid of these ugly little bastards." He swatted one of the wings, and it bent under his hand. That gave him a grim satisfaction. If they weren't invulnerable, then he might not have changed _that _much. He could still be hurt like a human.

"They're not little," Malfoy said quietly. "They're beautiful."

"And I've told you that I don't think so, and if you can't accept my words, then I don't know what I can say to you," Harry retorted, taking great pleasure in turning Malfoy's decaration back on him, and sought the door. Malfoy followed him, and Harry could feel the man's eyes on his back as he felt the heat from the wings.

Well. He had some thinking to do. He had some people to contact, and he had a job to see about retaining.

He paused at Malfoy's door for a moment, then shook his head and walked away.

He had thought about flying, unfolding his "beautiful" wings in Malfoy's sight, but he didn't know what point he would have been trying to prove if he had, to either Malfoy or himself.


	13. Charging at the Truth

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirteen—Charging at the Truth_

"What he told you is true."

Harry sighed, leaning back against the headboard and sticking his wings through the holes that he'd cut into it. One variation of that phrase or another had been all he heard since he started seeking some way to disprove Malfoy's theories.

He couldn't disprove them because they were true. The phoenix wings were wound into his magical core, and he wasn't going to get rid of them by cutting them off or plucking feathers or waiting and hoping that they would fall off on their own. Harry had asked a few Potions masters, the ones who seemed most sympathetic, about possibly changing his magical core so that they would fade away on their own, but from what they had said, it would be like changing his curse scar. It was there, it wouldn't fade with the application of most magic, it was difficult even to glamour—though at least the last Potions master had promised that the wings wouldn't burn through a glamour the way Harry's scar did—and he would have to put up with it, because this was his life now.

Harry reached out and clenched the edge of his right wing. It trembled like tissue paper in his grasp, but of course it was nowhere near as fragile, and he couldn't tear it off, either. If he had, he already would have.

They might be beautiful, or at least Malfoy had persuaded Harry that _he _really believed that, no matter what Harry felt or other people believed. But the people who felt that way didn't have to deal with the fact that Harry couldn't wear normal shirts anymore, or that he couldn't sleep on his back—which had been the way he most often fell asleep—or that he couldn't sit on normal chairs, or that he had to estimate the distance between the sides of doorways and windows before he knew if he could pass them.

That had been something Head Auror Fletcher said to him today, her mouth pursed and her eyelids twitching, something Harry hadn't even thought of. "And what would happen if you needed to escape a burning building quickly, Potter? Could you take the same escape route that everyone else used?" In that case, luckily, she had accepted his answer that he could fly away from it, and that the fire was less likely to harm him than it was with most other people.

Harry grimaced and closed his eyes. There were moments when he hated his job, but far more when he liked it. And the wings would make everything more difficult.

It wasn't—it wasn't that he hadn't expected his life to be less difficult after the war. Not really. He had known he might be wounded or even die in the pursuit of Dark wizards and Death Eaters, and he had known that his fame would always be hanging around, and he had known that he still didn't have parents or relatives to rely on.

But those was all years old, or risks that he had already accepted. He had never thought that there might be a risk he would get phoenix wings and end up half-human and half-_something_. He couldn't say that he was half-phoenix because of all the differences from a real phoenix that Malfoy had helpfully pointed out for him.

_Malfoy_.

Harry rubbed his hand over his face, and sighed. So. He needed to go back and admit that Malfoy was right, and that Harry would be grateful for his help. He could admit that he was right, too, about the reasons he might have for finding the wings beautiful and wanting Harry to keep them.

What he _couldn't _do was say that he was happy about the wings. He would live with them, since he had no choice. But he could already fly before this, and he had made his peace with the things that he couldn't change, and he had about had his fill of unprecedented strangeness. He would get used to the wings because he had to, but they brought him no joy.

The wings flexed up and down as if they had heard that thought and resented it. Harry gave them a sharp smile and shook his head. "You don't, you know," he muttered, deciding that he could talk to them aloud as long as no one else was here to hear him sound like an idiot. "I don't like this. I don't _care _for it. Flying with you feels nice, but in the end it only makes the newspapers more eager to write stories about me. You don't add anything to my life, you just make it bloody inconvenient."

The wings drooped like scolded puppies. Harry snorted. He knew they didn't have an opinion and mind of his own. They reflected his moods, and right now they reflected his mood of restlessness, longing to be free of them, and sour accommodation. He had to learn to think of them like that, not as separate beings that he could be parted from.

He would get used to them, because he had to.

For once, it would be nice to do something that wasn't because he had to.

* * *

"Potter."

Malfoy's voice was wary as he looked up and saw Harry standing in the door of his Potions lab, and Harry couldn't really blame him. He shrugged apologetically, and glanced back once at his wings. This time, he had tried binding them to his back with ropes instead of a simple restraining charm. It worked as long as he didn't move his shoulders too much, and it made him a more normal size, which was nice. "Malfoy. Hullo. I hope I'm not interrupting your work?"

"Would you care if you were?"

"Not a few days ago," Harry said, not coming in, because Malfoy hadn't actually answered the question. "Now, I do. I think we need to talk again. Can I come in, or are you in the middle of a potion that you can't leave?"

Malfoy sneered at him. "And that would be the only reason that you would care about interrupting me?"

"See, this is the reason that I didn't think we should talk that often," Harry said. "Because we just end up arguing." Malfoy only stood there, poised and so still but with the potential of more stirring around him, that Harry thought _he _was the one who should have wings. "All right, yeah, if you don't want me here, I'll go away. But I was under the impression that you did want me here, although perhaps not exactly _here. _I mean, maybe you want me in your flat, or outside in other parts of hospital, or—"

"Listening to you babble is not how I wish to spend my morning," Malfoy snapped, and then leaned forwards and cast a charm on the potion in the cauldron that seemed to freeze the bubbles in mid-leap. "Come in, then, if you can avoid knocking anything over."

Harry smiled in spite of himself as he stepped through the door. So there were times when Malfoy found the wings annoying, too. That was good to know.

He felt the wings trembling and bounding against the ropes, and renewed the charm. The ropes were connected to a sort of harness that ran around his shoulders and down to his chest. It had taken Harry almost an hour to find something that fit and yet didn't restrict his movements. But once he had that, it was more comfortable than he'd been yet. Only a few people had stared at him as he walked through the corridors of St. Mungo's, and that might be as much because of his face and scar as it was because he looked like a hunchback.

He glanced up to find that Malfoy was staring at him, his lip curled as if he didn't know whether he wanted to give a sneer or not. "What?" Harry asked.

"You're—you're _mutilating _yourself." Malfoy made a disgusted gesture. "This is the kind of man I'm obsessed with. Don't worry, Potter, quite as much of my disdain is for myself as it is for you."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I've accepted that you were right. The wings are attached to my magical core far more than they're attached to my back, and I'll have to keep them. But that doesn't mean I'm just going to let them bang about doing whatever they like. I'd tie up my arm if it was broken and getting in the way, too."

"They're not a broken arm," Malfoy snarled, and waved his wand. Harry automatically ducked what he thought was an attack and pulled his own wand, but then he heard the door slam shut, and reckoned Malfoy's spell must have done it. "They're going to be like this for the rest of your life. Tying them down doesn't sound much like acceptance to _me_."

"But they are in the way," Harry said. "And they might be beautiful, and they might let me fly, and they might be magical as all bloody hell, but they still don't function very well indoors. You know something, Malfoy? I'm still human, and I'm going to be spending a lot of my life _inside buildings_."

"I know that, you idiot," Malfoy said, bending so far forwards that Harry thought he might fall over, and scowling at him. "That doesn't mean that you need to tie them up like that. That doesn't mean that I can't deplore your being an idiot. The wings would be better off with someone else who could give them what they needed. Like me."

"If there was a way to give them to you, then I would," Harry said fervently, and strengthened the charm again when the wings bucked against the bindings once more. They seemed to know they were being talked about. "We discussed that before. I would have been willing to make you a gift of all the feathers and the wings themselves if they would come _off_." He felt an entirely unreasonable anger against the wings for being part of his magical core. Both he and Malfoy would have been pleased if they had come off, and the wings, if they really did have some kind of sympathetic response to the person holding them, would have been away from someone who despised them and with someone who didn't. If they only had had the good sense to be detachable…

"Will you tell me something?"

Malfoy's voice had gone all soupy and soft. Harry looked up in some wariness. "I'll try," he said. "Depending on what it is, I might not be able to make it very clear."

Malfoy brushed that away as though it didn't matter. His eyes were fixed on Harry, and they were very clear. "I want you to tell me what's so ugly about the wings," he said.

"They're inconvenient—"

"The inconveniences are things you can learn to live with," Malfoy said. "People do harder things every day."

He sounded less scolding than he had a while ago, almost mild, but Harry still felt a burning blush creep over his face. He cleared his throat and looked away. "They're hard to live with, like I said. And they aren't the sort of thing that I can do something to—I don't know what the word is. Fulfill? Everyone expected me to defeat Voldemort because of the scar, and I did. But there's no getting away from the wings, no expecting anyone to think they're less significant over time. They'll always stare and gawk."

"Again, you don't know that, and I think you're overestimating the fascination your wings have for most people who aren't you and me," Malfoy said calmly. "Why do you think they're _ugly? _Why do you want to bind them and glamour them and cut them off and pluck the feathers?"

Harry shook his head. "They're not meant to be here. They're like a chicken's wings, or a hawk's wings. Not something that you expect to see on a human being." _And I am a human being. No matter what the Dursleys said. No matter what the bloody papers say, when they try to make me into a saint or hero that's too good for anyone. I'm still going to be human, and they're not going to make me otherwise._

_ But these wings might._

"I see," Malfoy said, though so neutrally that Harry had no idea whether he did or not. Malfoy might be on the way to understanding his own impulses towards Harry, but he wasn't an expert on what Harry felt about himself. "Why don't you stand and spread them for me? I want to show you something."

Harry looked pointedly at the delicate vials on the shelves. "I don't want to smash anything."

"Shame that you care about that _now_, when you've already smashed a lot of my hopes and my images of you as someone who could actually be civil to me," Malfoy drawled. "Not to mention some of my pride, knowing that I was pining after a right idiot."

Harry tightened his muscles, which of course tightened the bindings, which of course cut into the wings, which of course made him hiss in pain. He opened his mouth to retort, but Malfoy placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a single intense look. The look seemed to impose silence; Harry stared back instead of snapping.

"Just once," Malfoy said quietly. "I don't know exactly why you came here, but I think this is the last chance. The last time I want to bother with this if I can't make you understand. I shouldn't be giving you _this _many opportunities, but I still don't think that you've ever properly looked at your wings, or you wouldn't say daft things like that."

Harry opened his mouth to reply, then closed it firmly when Malfoy raised a warning eyebrow. Right. Last chance. He would try being quiet and polite for once and see if it got him somewhere. It was possible that Malfoy would make the potion to let him retract his wings after all. Harry nodded and tried to look patient as Malfoy undid the bindings on his wings, untying all the ropes that it had taken Harry so many hours to conjure this morning.

"They cut into them, did you know that?" Malfoy asked at one point. "Your right wing is crumpled and bedraggled. And you haven't been washing them…" He cut off then, because he had probably realized the thing Harry might have told him, that it was bloody hard to wash your wings when you couldn't take a shower because of them. Harry had resorted to Cleaning Charms. Sprinkling water on the wings just made them glow with heat and burn it all away before it could touch his skin _or _the feathers.

Harry took a few deep breaths as Malfoy undid the harness. It did feel better when he could breathe and extend the wings to their full range of motion, he had to admit. It was still nothing that he really wanted to do every day.

Malfoy started extending his wings to their full reach, and Harry winced as he watched the nearest edge of the left one arch up almost to the point of brushing against a shelf loaded with cauldrons. Malfoy reached out and let a hand hover next to his face when he did that, however, until Harry turned and reluctantly looked at him.

"Look at me," Malfoy whispered. "Soft. Easy. That's it. Yes."

Harry swallowed nervously. For some reason, this was worse than deciding that he was going to talk to Malfoy without snapping. Malfoy's hands on his wings had always felt pleasant, but this time the pleasure was muted and they felt…careful. As though he was an artist's model Malfoy needed to pose just right for a painting or something.

Harry shook his head. He didn't normally have such thoughts, but he could hardly accuse Malfoy of influencing him. He'd accused him of too much already.

Maybe he didn't ordinarily have such thoughts because he didn't like looking at himself, thinking about the way the wings had added to his body or the way the scar looked or even the way he looked in Auror robes. It was just—too much. Besides, if he ever forgot what he looked like, there were the photographs on the cover of _Witch Weekly _at least once every fortnight to remind him. He found it weird, thinking about it, that Malfoy had decided he was attractive at all when he had to be sick of seeing Harry everywhere.

Malfoy turned him, stroking the wings, relaxing them, smoothing the feathers down. Harry tamed the impulse to run the other way and remained still. He _would_. Retreating now, wrapping himself in his own private concerns and thoughts, would be cowardly. He was tempted to hold his breath, but didn't.

"There." Malfoy waved his wand and said something in a mumble. The air in front of Harry seemed to shine. "Look up."

Harry did, and beheld himself in the conjured mirror.

The wings extended behind him and up, trembling still, like the hands of someone who'd had to hold up a huge burden for too long. The colors that Harry had taken note of the first time he woke with them and never again shone like fire, like water, like water on fire. The red and gold were everywhere, but there was blue and white too, like torches, and orange like autumn leaves, and plain and simple yellow like the glow of candles. The wings did strange things to his eyes, making them deeper or more noticeable somehow. For the first time, Harry thought someone could look at him and fail to notice the scar at all.

Malfoy's hands settled on his shoulders. There was an expression on his face that Harry had to pick to pieces to read. His cheeks were flushed with what could have been excitement or anger; his eyes were bright with what could have been passion; his hands were shaking with what could have been the desire to pull Harry close or the desire to claw him apart.

"This is what you can look like, when you appreciate yourself and have someone to appreciate you," Malfoy said. "This is what I see when I look at you. And I _wish_," and his fingers curled into the sleeves of the half-shirt that Harry was wearing, "that you would quit referring to yourself as ugly and a freak and a chicken. I wouldn't care if it was true, but you're making a mockery of my taste and lying at the same time."

Harry felt the urge in his muscles that he had felt when he faced the reporters and the truths that Malfoy had told him. The urge to lash out, splinter, destroy, disconnect himself from what he saw in front of him. This time, he thought Malfoy would go away in disgust, and Harry could finally be alone.

And lonely.

He reached up and caught one of Malfoy's hands. "I'm sorry," he said, but not in the kind of tone he would usually use when saying that. It sounded strange and shrill and dignified.

"You had better be," Malfoy said, and they stood in front of the mirror for a little longer, looking.

It was harder than Harry had thought it would be, given his job and the way he'd had to defeat Voldemort, but he didn't run.


	14. Options

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Fourteen—Options_

"How are you feeling, mate?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Ron reaching out to clap him on the shoulder, and then stopping and staring at the wings. He probably thought a clap would hurt the bloody things now. With a snort, Harry turned and extended his hand to his best friend. "I have a few options," he said. "Malfoy thinks that he might be able to come up with a potion that lets me retract the wings."

Ron smiled at him, but there was a sharp line bending down to his mouth. "But not get rid of them?"

Harry grimaced and shook his head, sitting down behind his desk. He'd been practicing most of the weekend, and now his wings would stay still when he commanded them to, as long as he was concentrating on them. That way, they didn't flap in an excited flurry and send paper blowing all over the surface of his desk. "No. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much that can do _that_. The bloody things are wound into my magical core."

Ron nodded. "Well, as long as you're not unhappy about them, mate, then I don't have any reason to be."

Harry thought for a few seconds, staring at the far wall of the office. The stacks of paperwork in the way made that a little difficult, but he had deliberately decided not to worry about those for now. They had ended the threat of Hyperion Rosier, the other cases could go hang. "It's weird," he said at last. "I've talked with Malfoy, and he's convinced me that they're not going anywhere. I still don't like them. I don't like the way they take up room and make me walk and hang around my back and won't let me lie down." If the retraction potion worked, the one thing he most looked forward to was getting a good night's sleep in the old, normal way. "But if I can put them in their pouches and keep them that way, then—it's like growing out my fringe to hide my scar, I reckon. Not something I like, but something I can live with."

Ron stayed silent. Harry looked up and found that his friend was studying him in the close way he used when he thought Harry was hiding a wound after a fight with a Dark wizard. Harry squirmed. Of course, he had nothing to feel guilty about _now_, but the plain fact was, when Ron looked at him like that, it was because he was indeed hiding a wound, most of the time.

"What?" Harry asked finally, since Ron hadn't made it clear what he disapproved of.

Ron sighed. "I just wish that it hadn't happened, mate. You deserve the normal life you want, after everything you've done for the wizarding world. Is that so much to ask?"

Harry huffed out a laugh. "If I see Rosier when I die, then I'm going to shake him by the shoulders and ask him that."

Ron finally smiled. "Yeah, I'm sure that he has the same ambitions as all the rest of us," he muttered, and reached down for a file on his own desk. "As long as you think that you can be okay, Harry."

Harry nodded. He wouldn't ever be exactly happy with the wings, he didn't think, not ecstatic the way that Malfoy wanted him to be, and he wouldn't ever despise them as much as he had on the first day, when he had thought they were a temporary burden that he was just too stupid to figure out how to get rid of on his own. But a happy medium—that, he could probably find and live with.

And he had lived through harder things. He'd overcome most of his scars of the war, not all of them. He'd learned to live with most of the consequences of his fame, not all of them. He got a bit more battered and chipped each year as he went through life.

But that was preferable to the alternative where he was perfectly preserved because he wasn't moving anymore.

* * *

"Yes?" Healer Redusson looked up from her own piles of paper on the desk in front of her, although her eyes widened when she saw Harry standing in the doorway of her office. Harry saw the moment when she twitched, trying to decide if she should reach for her wand or clear room in her treatment schedule for him, and then she swallowed and nodded. "Auror Potter. What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to apologize," Harry said.

Redusson blinked several times. Harry hoped that was because she didn't get apologized to often by men with phoenix wings on their shoulders, not because she had never expected an apology from him. "For what?" she finally asked.

"For burning your mediwizard," Harry said, staring himself then. He had thought that would be obvious. Just getting upset while she was treating him didn't rate an apology. "I hope he's all right."

To his surprise, Redusson smiled at him. "You mean Joseph? He was standing too close, and he ought to have known that we were dealing with dangerous, unpredictable magic, because no one knew enough about the wings at the time. He will deal with far more dangerous afflictions in the future, and this was the perfect arena for him to learn caution in."

Harry gave her a bemused smile in return. Well, if she was all right with it, then he reckoned he would have to be, as well. "But I didn't singe all his hair off or blind him or anything like that?"

Redusson shook her head. "He lost his eyebrows and a few eyelashes. He was too vain in any case. He can also learn humility this way. Two valuable lessons at the same time."

Harry smiled at her in bewilderment, exchanged a few more pleasantries, and left, feeling his wings ruffle and stand upright, with individual feathers curving around as if to stroke his face. Well, that _was _strange. It was the thing he had felt most bad about doing since he had the wings. It was unfair and out of the blue and directed at someone who hadn't hurt him. But perhaps he didn't have to feed his endless guilt complex after all.

"Harry."

So of course, just when he was feeling that he might be able to think differently about himself, the embodiment of doing so popped up behind him. Harry turned around with a wary little nod. "Malfoy." He watched as Malfoy's eyes went to his wings, and then to his face. His stomach squirmed. _Well, if he can invent the retraction potion he talks about, then we'll be able to see whether he actually likes me for more than them. _Malfoy said he did, and Harry had more reason to trust him than to trust most people right now, but he watched Malfoy's eyes as well as listening to his words, and they always darted to his wings first.

"I have the first test potion almost done," Malfoy said. "But I need a feather, if you don't mind providing one." He reached out and let his fingers run along the nearest edge of the left wing. Harry shifted away before he thought about it, wrapping the wing protectively in towards his body.

Malfoy smiled at him instead of getting upset, the way Harry had reckoned he would. "I promise, I can pluck it in a way that will make it not hurt," he said, and reached out again, this time holding his hand beneath the wing the way that he would try to catch a drop of falling water. "Will you let me?"

Harry watched him for a second, but this time Malfoy was looking him in the face, and his smile was at least as reassuring as Healer Redusson's. Harry nodded reluctantly, and splayed the wing out so that Malfoy could take what feather he wanted. He had no idea how Malfoy was going to choose between the different colors and sizes and positions, anyway.

Malfoy's hand lingered, but since he didn't make Harry squirm with pleasure in the middle of the corridor, that was okay. In fact, this time his touch felt different again, filling Harry with a warmth that was like standing next to the huge fire in Malfoy's flat. He half-closed his eyes and let his head droop for a second.

"Thank you."

Sure enough, Malfoy had plucked the feather without causing him pain. Harry jerked his head back up, blinking, and found Malfoy staring at him as if to say he was thanking Harry for the way he'd let his head droop like a defenseless idiot, not for the feather. Harry flushed and nodded back, wrapping the wings in again to fold them. "Sure. When should I come by and test the potion?"

"That won't be necessary for a few days." Malfoy reached out, letting his hand hover as though he didn't know what to touch now that Harry had the wings folded. "But I would like to see you before then. This evening?"

Harry studied him for long enough that Malfoy frowned at him, and then he shook his head. "Is this because you want to, or because it's needed for the potion, or for some other reason?" he asked.

"Must you constantly force me to honesty?" Malfoy's eyes had a fierce light behind them that Harry admired, but also didn't intend to let excuse him from telling the truth. "I am—unused to this with anyone else."

"I know," Harry said. "And someday, when I trust you more, that won't have to happen." He left out whether Malfoy could trust him more in the future, because so far, Malfoy always seemed to have assumed Harry was telling the truth. "But for now, I want to know which it is. I know how you think of the wings, and how you think of me. I don't know more than that."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes as though he was facing into a strong wind. "What more is there to know than that?"

"Whether you _like _me," Harry said. "Whether there are things about me for you to like besides the way I challenge you and my wings and maybe the way I fuck."

Malfoy blinked. "I could ask you the same about me."

"And that's the reason I'm asking you this question," Harry said. "To help me determine that."

Malfoy at least looked at him differently now. He nodded slowly, as though Harry's words had acquired an actual meaning, and then said, "I can only repeat what I said before. _I'd _like to see you. This evening?"

Harry smiled at him. "Your flat, or your office?"

* * *

This time, the fire was blazing away at a less overwhelming rate when Harry arrived at Malfoy's flat. He stopped inside the doorway, pulling in and hunching his wings as usual, and looking around. "Malfoy?" he called.

"A moment. Make yourself at home."

Harry snorted a little and drifted towards the fireplace. None of the chairs in front of it were the kind he could sit in comfortably, still. He thought about drawing his wand and making them so, but Malfoy might not appreciate unwanted Transfigurations in his home. Harry stood instead, watching the fire and the doorways out of the corner of his eye.

The wings insisted on intruding themselves, of course, quivering around and floating up and down like the wings of a particularly large and stubborn butterfly. Harry rolled his eyes with a small snort. If they wanted to do that, fine. He wasn't going to bind them again, not as long as there was the chance that he could control them better with a potion, but he still disliked the way they betrayed his emotions.

He wasn't sure this was the best idea. He still didn't know why Malfoy had invited him over, but his thoughts wavered back and forth between poisoning him in an attempt to get all the feathers at once and chaining him to the bed.

The second scenario was definitely the better idea for _him_, but he wasn't sure that it should have been.

Then Harry shrugged. He had slept with Malfoy to get rid of stress and because Malfoy had been the first one who didn't seem entirely put out and uncomfortable with the wings, including Harry himself. It had been a mistake, probably, but it hadn't really hurt him. And if it had hurt Malfoy, then he had chosen to come back and combat the pain.

If they fucked again, Harry might be able to determine whether it would _ever _be more than a mistake, or only that.

He turned around when Malfoy came into the room, and blinked. Malfoy was carrying a tray with two large goblets on it. Harry could smell the pungent drink inside them from here, and he sniffed in delight, although the scent wasn't familiar. It was thick and sweet, like boiled sugarcane. He reached out and took a cup from the tray without thought.

"You trust me that much?" Malfoy's voice was low and seemed to wind through the room, as present and prevalent as the crackle of the fire or the smell of the drinks.

"Yes, enough for this," Harry said. "Besides, Ron knows where I am again. You'll have to explain yourself if I fail to show up." He sipped the drink. As sweet as it smelled, but not overwhelmingly so. He closed his eyes and sighed, and felt the wings mantle a little, off his back, reflecting his pleasure.

"I wanted to speak to you," Malfoy said. "About ordinary things. Quidditch, and what teams you favor. How you like your job. Who the most annoying people are whom you encounter in your daily life."

Harry blinked his eyes open and studied him. Then he grinned. There was something absurdly _cute _about Malfoy standing there, still holding the tray, and caught somewhere between being a good host and an awkward welcome. "I think you already know the answer to the last one, don't you?" he asked, and sipped again.

Malfoy seemed to relax, maybe because of the snipe. "Then tell me how I can move out of that category," he suggested, picking up his own cup.

"Talk to me about you," Harry said. "And don't look at the wings so much." Malfoy guiltily snapped his gaze away from them again. _And something else, but I can't tell you without prejudicing you, not until the potion is finished. _"But mostly the first one. I know how you feel about _me_ in the years since the war_, _but not much else."

Malfoy blinked, then smiled at him. The smile was slow and explorative and made Harry's mouth dry out, which was probably the best sign he'd had so far. He nodded and sat down in the nearest chair. "Maybe this will work," he whispered—also a good sign, because that meant he had doubts like Harry did, instead of just being inhumanly certain and correct all the time. "Won't you sit down?"

Harry cleared his throat and cast a glance between the wings and the high chair-back in front of him. "I didn't know if you'd want me to change it," he explained, when Malfoy just went on looking blank. Maybe he expected so much rudeness of Harry that he thought he'd just draw his wand and cast without permission.

_And let's face it, a week ago, I probably would have._

"Oh!" Malfoy lashed his wand, and the nearest chair spun around and then seemed to dive down into itself, producing a stool with more legs than any Harry had ever seen. They would give it extra stability, he reckoned, and keep the stool from wobbling when he sat on it. Another swish and flick and murmured incantation, and Malfoy had covered the top with a thick-looking cushion. "Please sit down."

Harry did, and then looked at Malfoy. "What did you want to talk about first?"

Malfoy hesitated. "Do you want me to touch your wing while we do this?"

Harry smiled in spite of himself at the offer. "No," he answered. "Sooner or later, we have to get past that. At least, if we're going to matter more to each other than just Potions master and patient. So. Tell me why you enjoy Potions. That's something that Snape never managed to make me understand, and you know I was no good at them in school."

"Except for sixth year," Malfoy murmured, gaze heavy on him.

Harry shrugged, which made the wings more uncomfortably, which was stupid, which required him to smooth them back again. Finally, they were settled, and he said, "I cheated." If Malfoy resented that now, after all this time, that might be another sign that this wouldn't work.

But Malfoy only nodded, presumably because he had guessed that for himself, and then arranged his hands in front of him. "What Snape said about potions is essentially true. It's an art you don't use wands for. The magic comes from _you_, from your skill in putting together the combination of ingredients and your patience and your nerve and your cleverness…"

Harry watched the streaks of firelight cross Malfoy's intense eyes and bright hair, and watched his hands making long, lightning-shaped gestures through the air, like wings themselves, and relaxed a little. _This could work, yeah._

* * *

"I think it's ready."

Harry hadn't known that words spoken through a Floo connection could still make his breath catch and his heart pound fast enough to fill his vision with blasts of red and black. At least, not when they didn't refer to Death Eaters. He opened his eyes and closed them, then nodded. "Right. Should I come to the lab?"

"That would be acceptable," Malfoy said, in that controlled murmur that Harry was growing used to, as though expressing actual _emotion _would drain Malfoy in some unspecified fashion. Harry started to nod and stand, but Malfoy interrupted with a faint cough. "Or you could come to my flat."

Harry blinked only once before he nodded again. "That's…acceptable," he said, and watched Malfoy's lip curl slightly. "Fine. Do you have any appointments this afternoon, or can you meet right now?"

"Would I have called you and told you the potion is _ready _if I had any other appointments?" Malfoy said.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Excuse me for trying to be considerate." Then there were the times that he was convinced nothing would ever work between him and Malfoy, and they were both doomed to dance around each other until they collapsed inwards like a star self-destructing.

His wings ruffled out in front of him, and he pushed them irritably out of the way. "Should I come to your flat?" he repeated.

Malfoy let another few moments beat past in tense silence before he nodded. Harry smiled at him as much as he could and waited until Malfoy's face vanished from the fire before he left the office. He had stayed late anyway, trying to catch up on paperwork that had piled up while he was on holiday. No one would care if he left now.

He listened to the wings rustling behind him as he walked down the corridor, meeting only a few other late Aurors who looked more interested in their files than in him. How would it feel to have them gone, now that he had made a few strides in accepting them?

_Wonderful._

Harry nodded. He believed that Malfoy was telling the truth when he said that he found them beautiful, he accepted that, yeah, he himself probably didn't have to go around constantly saying how ugly they were, but he would still be happier with them gone. He didn't like the weight, he didn't like the way the feathers crumpled and hurt, he didn't like the way they prevented him from living a simple and normal life. If the scar had been like that, too, then he might have had time to get used to the consequences and wouldn't think anything of not being able to sleep on his back. But that wasn't the way he lived his life, and he wanted the way he lived his life _back._

With a few additions, of course.

* * *

"How did you make the retraction potion?"

Malfoy glanced back at him from where he was taking a vial off the fire with a pair of silver tongs. He wore a thick white robe that Harry didn't know the purpose of, since it seemed likely that it would end up stained with flying drops of potion. Maybe he needed to stay warm when he was brewing and forgot to cast charms on himself, or maybe it interacted with the fumes rising from the potions somehow.

"I used the feathers in a base which should make them curl up and retreat," Malfoy replied, and set the vial down in the middle of a complicated little metal contraption that stood on silvery legs and looked as if it would hold several dozen vials. He tapped the glass with one finger and listened critically to its ring. "It was more complicated than that, of course, but I doubt you want to listen to me talk about Potions theory. You looked bored the other night."

"Try me." Harry folded his arms and started to lean against the wall, but stopped when his wings unfolded behind him. He tried to conceal his sigh and the way he immediately wanted to smash them out of spite, for Malfoy's sake if not his own.

"All right," Malfoy said, after a glance so long that Harry began to think he would refuse. "But, like I said, it's really not all that interesting to someone who doesn't already know the theory."

Harry shrugged, and remained standing.

Malfoy couldn't quite hide a smile as he nodded at the potion. "I theorized from the beginning that your pouches were different from the ones that held a normal phoenix's wings. The magic that wound its way into your core created them to protect the wings, at least a little, against the fire and the power that you use to fly. Which means you were _meant _to fly, by the wings themselves," he added as an aside, staring at Harry.

"The wings don't mean anything, they're just body parts," Harry said impatiently. "So how did you convince the feathers to curl up and disappear inside the pouches?"

"Now who's attributing meaning to the wings that they don't really have?" Malfoy's eyes shone with triumph for a moment before he looked back down "The pouches also protect the place where your wings join your body. Permanent changes or not, they don't really have a natural template to work off. I knew it must look strange in there, not at all like the model of a normal bird's wing." He looked hard at Harry, as if he thought that he would seize on the words "strange" and "normal" and use them to talk about how much of a freak he was, again.

Harry just smiled. Hearing Malfoy describe him as different from a bird was a good thing, for him, because it meant that Malfoy probably thought he was human. Probably.

"So what did you do?" he asked.

Malfoy frowned at the potion again. "It's hard to describe this in terms that someone without the proper schooling would understand, but then, of course, I wouldn't need to describe this at all if you had the proper schooling," he muttered. He sighed when Harry gestured impatiently at him and rolled his eyes. "Simply said, the feathers themselves contain a clue to the pattern of structures that support the wings, if one knows how to read them. I can 'read' backwards from the feathers to the structures inside the pouches. That means I was able to reconstruct them, and to make them bend in my models. The potion contains instructions to your body to go backwards through the steps that it used when it was growing the wings, and pull them into the pouches."

Harry tilted his head. "Then why couldn't you just go _all _the way backwards and have the wings vanish?"

"Because I cannot make the pouches disappear," Malfoy said. "And because of the changes to your core that we already discussed. The wings are part of you now. I could make a potion that would shrink an arm, but not one that would make your body forget that it should have two. The changes are that deep."

"In the genetic code, then," Harry muttered. He wondered what would happen if he had children, but that was a question that would probably delay his taking of the potion by several hours. He put his hand out. "Can I have the potion now?"

Malfoy handed it over, and stood there observing him.

Harry toasted him with the vial, and tipped the sparking, blue-white liquid down his throat. For a moment, he thought it would be the first pleasant potion he had ever tasted, since it was cool and almost lemony, but then a thicker, more viscous taste caught up with that and he found himself trying to swallow what felt like wet socks. He grimaced and worked his way through it. The last thing he wanted to do was throw up all over Malfoy's neat, white robe.

He choked it down at last, and stood blinking at Malfoy for a few stupefied seconds before he felt the change begin.

The wings shuddered. Harry could _feel _them bending, the bones becoming liquid, the feathers blending with one another as though they were swirling like a smeared painting. He glanced at them once, and then yanked his eyes away. It reminded him of the time he had seen Lupin transform, a process that was more sickening to watch than anything else.

He bowed his head and breathed through an intense flash of heat that seemed to work its way through his body one nerve at a time. He had to bite his lip and clench his fists, but then the heat melted and began to fall away from him, and he was breathing more easily by the time he looked up.

The first thing he noticed was the way Malfoy was staring at him, and the second thing he noted was the absence of weight and heat that he had almost grown used to. He reached up and groped for the feathers on his shoulders.

They were gone.

Harry leaned back against the wall, and nothing prevented him. He turned and leaped and pirouetted in place, and nothing dragged at him and prevented him from moving as fast as he wanted. He burst out laughing, and there was no warning crackle or droop from his back, the way that there would be if the wings felt that he was scolding them.

He laughed, and went on laughing, falling to his knees and holding out his arms as if he would embrace the world.

"Harry?"

Malfoy's voice, low and rough, brought him back from his celebration. Harry shook his hair out of his eyes and looked up, smiling. Malfoy stood facing him with one fist jammed in the pocket of his robe, as though he wanted to reach out to Harry or punch him and then had stopped himself.

"Yeah?" Harry answered. He sat up and luxuriated in a stretch. He could lift his arms exactly the way he wanted to, and nothing stopped him. He whirled around on his knees, and jumped to his feet, and took a seat on one of the normal chairs. Just leaning against a high wooden back represented a luxury that he hadn't thought it could. He let his head droop to the side and closed his eyes.

"I—are you happy now?"

Harry opened his eyes and reached back over his shoulders before he answered. He could feel the pouches sagging between his shoulder blades, along his spine. They seemed heavier and fuller than they had been the last time he touched them—but then, that _had _been the first day that he got the wings. He pressed down, and heard the crackle and felt the heat. Yes, the wings were in there, coiled up like snakes in burrows.

"What happens if I want to take them back out?" he asked. "Do I have to drink another potion, or can I just decide that I want them and they'll unfold?"

Malfoy sneered at him, but the expression had no force behind it. Harry reckoned that watching Harry's celebration had rather withered whatever secret hopes he might cherish that Harry enjoyed having the wings and would be dismayed with the results of the potion. "Is that not something you should have considered _before _you took the potion?" he murmured.

"I know that you would have considered it, and you could tell me," Harry answered, standing up and staring at Malfoy.

Malfoy blinked as if that would never have occurred to him—and it probably wouldn't have, Harry thought—and then looked away and sighed. "You can unfold them when you want to," he said. "It will take some moments of concentration, and I wouldn't advise trying to do it in the middle of a stressful situation such as a battle, because it would probably throw you to the ground. But you can do it."

"Thanks," Harry said. He paused, but Malfoy wasn't looking at him, which dashed Harry's hope of conveying the message he wanted to with his eyes. He was going to have to say this aloud after all. "Malfoy, you've really done a lot for me, you know."

Malfoy grunted.

"I appreciate it," Harry said. "I know I was stubborn about admitting it—and there are _still _things I think you could have done better." Malfoy hunched his shoulders, but at least that was a better response than unresisting blankness. Harry pushed on. "But you were the one who found out the truth and taught me that the wings didn't make me ugly in everyone's eyes."

Malfoy nodded.

Harry coughed, and then waited until Malfoy looked at him, with such extreme reluctance Harry had to wonder if his plan would work after all. But then, it wasn't a plan in the sense that he could predict exactly what would happen. He held out a hand, and Malfoy stared blankly at it.

"Come on," Harry coaxed softly. "I want to—you were _brilliant _the last time we slept with each other, and that was when I was under stress and you were probably trying to come up with ways to seduce the poor little Gryffindor. I wouldn't mind sleeping with you again, if you want to show me what you can do when we both choose it."

Malfoy's eyes snapped to his face. "You _wanker_," he breathed.

Harry just raised his eyebrows, and nodded. So Malfoy had recognized the test in Harry's offer. If Malfoy really found him attractive without the wings, then he would still want to sleep with him when that they were hidden—later, if not now. If he had only been in it for the wings and didn't find Harry beautiful now that they were gone, if he was just there to look at them first before Harry's face or in the mirror, then he would walk away and Harry would do the same thing.

The wings were a part of him. They were here to stay, as Harry could feel their weight in the pouches on his back when he shifted his balance. But they would never be the whole of him, and he wanted to make sure that Malfoy knew that.

Malfoy wavered for long minutes. Harry knew why; he could read the man much better than he could have a few days ago, now that he was actually _looking _at him. He didn't want to react to Harry's test by just falling into his arms. He had his pride. He had been honest when he said that he was attracted to the wings, and now they were gone, and he had to look at just Harry, plain old Harry, whose most distinctive feature was his scar.

But Malfoy would also be a fool to just turn his back on someone he wanted, who, for once, was making a true attempt to want him back. He had grown past the boy who would do things to spite everyone, including himself. He had the chance to go on challenging and making himself matter to someone who had mattered so much to him.

Harry didn't know how the contest would be decided. Everything seemed equally pitted against each other. Malfoy stood there, head bowed, eyes half-closed as he struggled with himself, and Harry waited, hand extended. It seemed appropriate to him that Malfoy was now the one who had to decide whether to refuse Harry's hand or not.

In the end, Malfoy reached out and clasped Harry's wrist, fingers tight and hot as irons left in the fire.

Harry smiled, and led the way.


	15. Flare and Shine

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of _Flare. _Here's hoping for your enjoyment of the story, and that you come along for even more stories in the future.

_Chapter Fifteen—Flare and Shine_

Malfoy's bed was bigger than it had any right to be, but Harry didn't laugh. After all, his wings had been bigger than they had any right to be, and Malfoy had still thought they were beautiful instead of laughing.

Harry didn't appreciate the wings in the way that he knew Malfoy would have liked him to, but he was, perhaps, growing to appreciate other people's appreciation more.

He squirmed into the center of the bed and lay on his back, watching Malfoy's eyes widen to gratifying proportions and scratching his own itch to lie that way. He pushed his shoulders into the blankets and sighed. If he hadn't felt the first hardening at his groin and the urge to wish Malfoy out of his clothes _now_, he thought he could have gone to sleep this way.

"You look—natural there."

Harry opened one eye, not realizing until then that he'd had it closed, and looked at Malfoy. He was bending close to Harry, his mouth slightly open. He closed it as Harry watched, only to catch his lip between his teeth and worry it. His swallow was loud and audible in the quiet room.

Harry reached out one hand towards him. Malfoy came to him, taking it and rubbing his fingers over the back in what looked almost like awe, swallowing again when Harry leaned in and kissed him. Harry drove his tongue deep, determined to show Malfoy that they both wanted this equally, and if Malfoy was going to think him some fragile little _toy_, then he should think again.

It worked. Malfoy's hand curved tight around his hip and down, and hung _on._ Harry hummed happily as Malfoy's fingers dug into his skin and Malfoy's tongue dug into his gums, and then Malfoy was pulling back, shaking his head, saying in a thicker voice than he'd used the first time they had sex, "Get this off, I want this off _now_." His hand plucked hard at the shirt Harry wore, as if it was the only thing standing between his cock and Harry.

Harry laughed at him. "Your wish is my command," he said, and pulled out his wand to Vanish it. He followed it with his boots and pants and trousers, and lay back, spreading his legs. Malfoy made a choking noise.

"You're—not shy," he said, starting to shed his own clothes in a way that looked like a snake shedding its skin. A graceful snake, Harry had to admit. It wasn't a bad comparison, although he thought Malfoy might have taken it that way if he said it aloud.

"No," Harry said, and rolled up onto one elbow to look his fill at Malfoy's pale skin and the way it flushed. He thought that was a detail he hadn't properly admired the first time. "I learned how to stop being shy after the war. The first time I slept with someone I didn't consider a lifelong partner was a revelation. I could stop waiting around for marriage and enjoy myself, and life would still go on."

"That's," Malfoy said, and had to pause to think about his words, or perhaps just about the best way to wrestle his boot off. "Not really romantic."

"Not hardly." Harry looked at Malfoy's cock and made sure the git saw him licking his lips. That made Malfoy's hips thrust once, a shallow motion that called forth a smile from Harry again. He reached out and curled his fingers around the tip of the cock, drawing them forwards so that they slipped off the end. Malfoy bowed his head and grunted, turning to deliberately shallow breathing that Harry thought was meant to control his urge to come too soon. Harry smiled innocently at him and continued to stroke, though he turned it to almost intangible finger-taps as he got near the head. "I stopped being that way. You have a pretty good glimpse of the person I am in the way I reacted to the wings. Hasty, proud, quick to think that people are insulting me. Are you sure you want someone like that?"

Malfoy bent down and kissed him again, and Harry returned it hard enough that Malfoy looked dazed when he pulled away. Malfoy licked his lips, letting his tongue linger on the swollen spots along them. Harry was the one who thrust forwards this time, involuntarily. Malfoy's mouth smiled, but his eyes were shadowed. "You're talking about more than just fucking you?"

Harry nodded. "We can fuck casually if you want, and that's something I'd like to do. But if you want something more than that, then we still don't _know _each other, and you've shown that you can get really impatient with the way I really am. The same with me. This isn't a romance."

"What I told you about wasn't romantic, either," Malfoy said in a low voice, and finally kicked the last of his clothes off. "That I wanted you as some kind of—of image or inspiration."

Harry snorted. "Not even romantic enough to warrant that last word, as I think I told you at the time." He reached out and let his hand hover in front of Malfoy's groin, not touching as he looked up and caught the solemn grey eyes. "So. We're not in love. This isn't the beginning of a lifelong partnership, at least not without a hell of a lot of change or getting used to things. I may call the wings sometimes, but I won't have them all the time, and I'm still going to argue and fight with you. Can you live with that?"

Malfoy's smile was as dazzling as the evening star, and Harry thought, as Malfoy abruptly pressed him back into the bed and bit his neck, that the prat should have just walked up to him in hospital and showed him _that_. It would have got him what he wanted much faster than any amount of time complimenting the wings. "Yes," Malfoy breathed, and flexed down so that their cocks brushed together.

Harry moaned. That felt _bloody _good. He reached up, with no time for patience and no time for tact, and tried to pull Malfoy all the way down, so that he was actually lying on top of Harry instead of just hovering there like some damn great bird. _I thought I was supposed to be the one with the ability to hover, _Harry thought, and snickered.

Malfoy didn't respond to either the laughter or the pull, instead just floating in place with his eyes bright and his breath coming fast. Then he grabbed Harry's hand and brought it to his mouth, licking a quick stripe up the palm.

"Do you want to fuck me this time?" he whispered. "With you on your back and me above you, as you had to be when the wings were there? We could do anything we wanted."

Harry smiled, and he didn't care if Malfoy knew the smile was less for his words and more because he had heard Malfoy, at last, acknowledge that the wings weren't one-hundred-percent perfect and pure and beautiful. "I like to be fucked," he said, and paused to savor the flush that came to Malfoy's cheeks at those words, and the way his eyelids drooped. "I'll be perfectly happy on my back this time—it's not like I've had many chances lately to lie on it—and with my legs over your shoulders, my ankles up around your ears—"

Malfoy _bit _his palm this time, strong enough to make Harry's hips lift, and then shook his head and reached out to pick up lube from somewhere, his eyes dilated to the point that it was hard to hold them. "Don't say things like that," he whispered. "You make me want to come, and I don't want that to happen until I'm in you."

That made _Harry _want to come, and he squirmed impatiently around on the bed, trying to help Malfoy slick him up until Malfoy made a horse-like sound and grabbed his hips to hold him still. Harry endured Malfoy putting a few fingers in him, but then kicked the lube out of his hand and spread his legs pointedly.

"Not romantic," Malfoy said again, grabbing Harry's thighs and lifting them. Harry tossed his head back, sighing as he felt the stretch and burn in his muscles, and the strength of Malfoy's shoulders, where his ankles settled themselves.

"I like to be fucked," Harry repeated, because he thought it might make Malfoy move a little faster.

It did, or at least it didn't hurt. Malfoy thrust home, no fucking about, just fucking, and Harry's head hit the pillow once, and he drew blood from his lip biting down on it. Malfoy paused for the flicker of a second, but Harry nodded to him, and Malfoy began to fuck him, drawing away, plunging back in, swearing and crying out, and doing all the other things that Harry enjoyed the most.

It was good to find a partner like this, he thought. Someone who would trust him enough to go ahead with what Harry liked. He'd had a few men in bed who wanted to go so slowly that Harry had at last suspected they were afraid of damaging him, the wizarding world's precious Savior.

Malfoy knew he wasn't that, wasn't like that. Malfoy had seen him pulling bloody feathers out of his body and crying and raging and bouncing around on his knees while he laughed like a madman. Malfoy might not have any idea what he'd let himself in for yet if he planned to become Harry's permanent partner, but at least he wasn't prey to one particular kind of delusion.

He carried on making a good case for himself as he snapped his hips forwards, as he closed his eyes, as he exhaled in pleasure and bit Harry so hard that Harry knew he was trying to share the sensations coursing through his own body. Harry reached up and snagged a hand in his hair. His body shook with the constant surge of Malfoy's pounding, and he could feel the cock _inside _him in a way that didn't often happen, and he thought he could watch Malfoy's eyelids quivering with the force of his feelings for hours and be happy.

He turned his head to the side, bringing his mouth as near Malfoy's bobbing head as he could, since kissing him was out of the question at the moment. "Draco," he breathed, the word welling out of him in the same involuntary way that tears or blood would come. "Draco."

Malfoy was _gone, _climaxing with a wail, shooting deep and hard enough that Harry hissed with the pain. But he had a thick pillow behind him, and those ridiculous thick sheets around him—honestly, being on this bed was like being on a thick hump covered with velvet-green moss—and he could bear it.

Malfoy heaved and sobbed, seeming as if he was trying to keep himself from softening inside Harry, without success. Harry whined and shoved himself down, fucking his body steadily for a minute. He was almost there—he thought he could get there with a little more pressure, a little more—

Malfoy reached out and brushed his fingers down Harry's cock, not hard, with just enough pressure, just _enough_.

Harry was gone in turn, shooting high, falling low, and coming so much and so long that it seemed ridiculous, obscene. He could feel Malfoy's triumphant grin against his ear and turned his head to laugh at him.

"You made me come," he muttered. "You're proud of that?"

Malfoy didn't answer until he'd eased Harry's legs off his shoulders and pulled out of him. Then he leaned over him and studied him so much Harry wondered what unfortunate resonances his innocent little question had. Malfoy's eyelids flickered once before he looked away and sucked on his lower lip.

"You have no idea how proud," Malfoy said. He hesitated. "Will you call me—what you called me a few minutes ago?"

Of course Harry knew what he meant, but he made a little puzzled face as if he didn't before he reached up. Then he saw the nervous flickers along the corners of Malfoy's eyes, and relented. For whatever reason, this mattered a lot to Malfoy, and sometimes—maybe not all the time—Harry could do something just because it mattered to Malfoy.

"Draco," he said.

The kiss Malfoy gave him then seemed to steal all the air in his lungs and replace it with more air, of Malfoy's making.

* * *

Harry knocked on the door of Malfoy's flat, waited a few minutes, and then knocked again. He knew the great git was home. He had gone to hospital, and Malfoy's apprentices had informed him that he'd already left for the day. That left home, as far as Harry knew. Of course, he could also have gone to visit his parents or out for dinner or something, Harry acknowledged now, when it would probably have done him more good to think about it a while ago. It wasn't as though Malfoy's life revolved around him, particularly when they still weren't any regular kind of lovers.

Oh, they spent time together. That was inevitable, when they were—whatever they were. People who told each other stories about Potions theory and Auror work, who were connected in some weird way. Malfoy mattered to Harry because he'd helped him, and because he was maybe the one person Harry knew in the world who had stared at him but in a way that made it never intrusive, like the worship of so many people was.

Harry didn't think he'd call what they had a relationship. A friendship, maybe, except that they'd fought the other night about Malfoy's attitude towards Hermione and Harry had ended up storming out. And the day before that, he had made a casual remark about Azkaban that had knocked Malfoy into a high-flown rage about his father. Harry hadn't _meant _anything with his remark, but tell the Slytherin Who Lived to Find Insinuations in Innocent Comments that.

Harry rubbed his mouth with one hand and grinned a little ruefully. Ron and Hermione had both asked him what in the world he thought he was doing, and he hadn't been able to answer them. He shrugged with one shoulder. Well, if this didn't work out, it didn't work out. But so far, he didn't want to give up on it.

"Potter."

Harry turned around with a little blink. "Think of the devil," he said. Malfoy had arms loaded with groceries from one of the shops in Diagon Alley, at least if the bags and jars really held food and not Potions ingredients. "Do you want me to take some of that?"

Malfoy arched a jaundiced eyebrow and turned to the side so that Harry could reach some of the things in his arms. "As long as you think you can do it without dropping them."

Harry snorted and balanced a jar on the flat of his palm just to show that he could. "Youngest Seeker in a century, remember? I'm a miracle of balance and coordination."

The jar wobbled, but Harry caught it before it could fall, instead of having to dive after it. He raised an eyebrow at Malfoy and nodded. "If I wasn't one," he continued, as though Malfoy had argued with him, "then that would have smashed on the floor."

"Sure," Malfoy said, with enough burn behind his voice that Harry flinched a little, and kept handing the bags to him. Harry noticed that he'd got rid of the vast majority before he opened the door and stepped inside the flat. Harry followed, juggling, and put them down on the floor and counters in the kitchen. Malfoy had a kitchen that looked like a vision out of a fairy tale, especially because he could whisk his wand and send his food careening anywhere he wanted it. Harry wondered if he ever cooked in here.

He took another glance at the handsome cabinets of white wood, the heavy locks on some of the doors, and the high shelves, up against the walls where they wouldn't dump their contents on anyone's head. He nodded. It should work. He shut his eyes and concentrated.

"Potter, if you think—"

Malfoy fell silent. Harry knew why, but he continued concentrating until he was sure it had worked, until the weight and the warmth had come back, before he opened his eyes to see.

Malfoy's eyes were bright and glazed, fixed on the wings that stood up against the walls, feathers brushing just enough that they could brace Harry if he wanted to move. He had learned to control them that much. They weren't going to smash anything around him, because he had told them not to. Harry flapped his wings, a small slap of the air that cleared out a little of the staleness and would have cleared out the dust if such an enormous ponce as Malfoy had any, and then turned around and faced him completely.

"Is this the first time you've summoned them since I gave you the potion?" Malfoy's voice was low. He reached out towards the right wing, then stopped with his hand poised in the air and one eye on Harry.

_On my face, not my wings, _Harry thought with some satisfaction, and nodded. "It is. There's—there's not much I can say that I haven't already said, except thank you again for the potion." He pointed the wings towards Malfoy, angling them a little so Malfoy could reach them. "And that you can touch them, if you want."

Malfoy's hand was buried in feathers in an instant. Harry tilted his head back and let himself enjoy the uncomplicated pleasure for once, just as he had let himself enjoy the way Malfoy fucked him. This wasn't perfect, this wasn't the complete acceptance Malfoy wanted or the complete vanishing of the wings from his life that Harry would have preferred, but it was theirs, it was compromise. Harry suspected their compromises would just always be more thorny than the majority of those made by other people.

"I—you're not going to keep them out for me," Malfoy said.

Harry shook his head and opened his eyes. He had to say the right thing now, he knew it, but he wasn't as worried as he might have been before about making a mistake. So far, Malfoy was willing to give him chances to keep coming back and trying. Harry appreciated that. And if he could give Malfoy a chance after what he'd said about blood prejudice the other night, then Malfoy could give him some, too.

"No. But sometimes, it might be nice to fly without a broom. Sometimes, it's nice to have you touch them." Malfoy's hand shifted when he heard that, and Harry sighed as the pleasure ran like lines of fire down the veins of the wings, straight towards his groin. "Sometimes, I might bring them out so that you can touch them. Just not all the time, because I don't want to. That's the part I was wrong about. I thought that either what I wanted was all-important or what you wanted was. But what we want is most important, and if we want to grab and snatch at it, we can. And if we want to give each other gifts sometimes, that's all right."

He reached out and took Malfoy's wrist in his hand, touching it with the same ferocity that Malfoy was touching the wing. Because he was not going to be left out of this, left behind. If Malfoy acted possessive of him, then Harry would get the same privilege with Malfoy.

"And sometimes," he murmured, "I might want to go flying with you."

There were long, tense moments when Malfoy didn't seem to breathe at all and Harry thought he might die of oxygen deprivation. Then Malfoy let his breath out with a gasp and shook his head. "What about the wings being ugly and making you look like a freak?" he demanded. "I saw your celebration when you finally put them away. You weren't joking. I think you still think that they're ugly."

Harry shrugged, which made the wing bob under Malfoy's hand, which made Malfoy shiver in interesting ways. Harry would remember that.

"I can change my mind," he said. "Slowly. And I can let you have some of the things you want, always with the reminder that I can take them away again if I want to. You're not _forcing _me to do anything, Malfoy. Don't think you are. You gave me the choice to put the wings away, though, and I can respect that. Sometimes I might want to go flying with you, and sometimes I might want to say fuck you and never show them to you for a month, and sometimes I might want to say I'll fuck you with them out. That's just the way it is. From day to day, you don't always know what mood you're going to be in, what you're going to feel like doing. It's the same way with me."

Malfoy was silent so long that Harry wondered if he would refuse. Harry was aware of a nervous tick in his throat, of how he didn't _want _him to. But that was Malfoy's decision to make, so all Harry did was swallow, carefully, and wait.

"Say my name," Malfoy said.

Harry knew what he meant. "Draco," he said, and brought the wings out in a broad, sweeping gesture, hitting the wall a little but not injuring them, so that he could fold the wings around Draco's back.

Draco's breath came out in another stuttering gasp, and he braced himself with hands on Harry's wings. Harry shivered and stamped a foot. The pleasure of having _one _wing touched was nothing next to the pleasure of having both of them touched at once.

"And you said," Draco said, struggling to get his breath and his voice and his composure back, "that you weren't romantic."

Harry pulled him close, and waited until the moment Draco's eyes were open, looking at him. "I lie," he said softly. "A lot, sometimes. Which can also be romantic, if not the stuff of a grand romance."

Draco kissed him hard enough to bruise, and worked his hands into the feathers of Harry's wings, and Harry pulled them in, pulled him closer, tighter, embraced both himself and Draco, until there was nowhere they could look that didn't shine.

_So it might work out._

_ That's good enough._

**The End.**


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